


dark come soon

by Pseudologia



Category: Scream (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, my bad guys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2018-08-23 13:48:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 21,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8330182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pseudologia/pseuds/Pseudologia
Summary: Emma, tired of feeling breakable, tries to brush away her concern. “I really don’t think this guy was hitting on me or anything, anyway.”Audrey snorts, breaks eye contact with Emma. She picks at the rip in her favorite black jeans. “I mean, I know I wasn’t there or anything, but, trust me, he was.”“Thank God I have my lesbian best friend around to explain men to me,” Emma retorts, trying to move past the weird mood suddenly breaking in between them. “Hey,” she says, when Audrey still doesn’t look up from her knees. “If you’re so worried, just come to the party with me, Cujo.”Audrey looks at her, raises her eyebrows. “Yeah, okay. I will.”“Good.”“Great.”“Fantastic.”--it's a fake dating college AU, i'm so fucking sorry





	1. take me anywhere

**Author's Note:**

> this was formerly titled "ease my mind," but then i rebranded it to be named after a tegan and sara song, because i guess i didn't think hayley kiyoko had that emo gay vibe i was going for.
> 
> spoilers for the halloween special within literally like the first two sentences of this, fyi. this is probably gonna be, like, 5 chapters long and i intend to at least do a chapter a week, so kick my ass if i don't.
> 
> edit: this is going to be longer than 5 chapters lmao
> 
> edit edit: i lied about a chapter a week please don't kick my ass i'm sensitive (for real though i'm going to finish this if it kills me, it just might take a while longer than i originally anticipated. thanks for your patience.)

“Have you ever thought that, maybe, you have, like, the worst taste in men, ever?”

Emma throws back her head and laughs. “It had occurred to me, yes. Probably sometime around dating two serial killers in a row.”

“Again, not to be that guy,” Noah pipes in, with the exact intonation of someone who is about to be That Guy, “but Tom Martin falls more neatly into the ‘mass murderer’ category—”

Audrey and Emma groan in unison, and Noah smartly retreats back under his massive noise-cancelling headphones. He had his first film studies midterm due in two weeks. This meant, in Noah terms, that he was already way behind. The girls, on the other hand, are content to take in another sunny-but-not-stifling Lakewood September day before heading off to their afternoon classes. Audrey bumps the toe of her Doc Martens against Emma’s sandal-clad feet.

“Seriously, though, Em. It’s been, like, a lot to meet all these new people since orientation. Even for me. You sure you’re okay to go to some party thrown by a guy you don’t even know?”

Emma rolls her eyes. “Yeah, guard dog, I am.” But Audrey is still just staring at her, her dark-eyed gaze persistently sincere. Emma, tired of feeling breakable, tries to brush away her concern. “I really don’t think this guy was hitting on me or anything, anyway.”

Audrey snorts, breaks eye contact with Emma. She picks at the rip in her favorite black jeans. “I mean, I know I wasn’t there or anything, but, trust me, he was.”

“Thank God I have my lesbian best friend around to explain men to me,” Emma retorts, trying to move past the weird mood suddenly breaking in between them. “Hey,” she says, when Audrey still doesn’t look up from her knees. “If you’re so worried, just come to the party with me, Cujo.”

Audrey looks at her, raises her eyebrows. “Yeah, okay. I will.”

“Good.”

“Great.”

“Fantastic.”

Emma tries, and fails, to stay stone-faced. Just like that, the two of them are laughing again, and the weirdness has passed. Sometimes Emma thinks that’s why she and Audrey have been able to remain so close for so long—no matter how many stutters and interruptions they face, they’re always able to bounce back as even stronger friends.

“We can get ready together and stuff after dinner, then,” Emma tells her, as she sits up and starts to pack up her laptop.

“Yeah, good call, you know I take a while to primp,” Audrey snarks. “Have fun in bio,” she tells Emma as the other girl stands, shaking grass out of her hair and messing with her backpack straps.

Emma gives her a little salute as she heads off toward the science quad, and Audrey pretends not to watch her go. When she turns back around, Noah has his headphones off. He’s giving her That Look, the one that has led to so many fights between the two of them over the past few months, and Audrey prepares to go on the offensive. Blissfully, though, Noah chooses to go the neutral route.

“What’d I miss?” he asks, feigning innocence like the terrible actor he is.

Audrey, the notably better deceiver in their relationship, shrugs. “Emma made a horror movie reference,” she tells him.

Noah’s eyebrows shoot up, genuinely impressed.

 

\--

 

The party sucks. That’s an objective observation, not just one Audrey is making because actually every single dude here is completely repulsive, the only drink available is piss-watery beer, and the dorm basement is inexplicably humid. Nobody looks like they’re having fun, least of all the hapless girls lured here by promises of fun or romance.

“How do you know this guy again?” Audrey leans in to ask Emma, so that the other girl can hear her over the bumping remix of Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite.” Which, _seriously?_ What year is it?

“He helped me find my anatomy classroom during the first week of class,” Emma explains. She leans down to respond to Audrey, because she’s wearing heels that make their height difference even more ridiculous. Some of her honey-blonde hair tickles Audrey’s neck while she talks, which is, like. You know. Whatever.

Audrey takes another sip of her beer. It’s almost empty, she realizes. They’ve barely been here for twenty minutes.

“That’s some meet-cute, Em,” she responds, because when Audrey’s feeling vulnerable she prefers to plaster over her emotions with verbal drywall.

Emma gives her a deservedly weird look before perking up at the sight of someone approaching. It’s a random, bland dude—the kind of guy you wouldn’t be able to pick out of a lineup of similar-looking guys, except, also, he has scruff. Just Emma’s type, Audrey observes mirthlessly.

“Anatomy girl, you came!” he bellows, and it’s suddenly clear that the guy is belligerently drunk.

Emma, who prefers not to drink thanks to what she once explained to Audrey as her “genetic predisposition to alcoholism,” immediately bristles. “Uh, yeah. It’s Emma.” She points to the dude. “Audrey, this is Derek.”

“Charmed,” Audrey mutters into her Solo cup.

“Yeah, I recognized you,” Derek tells her blearily. “Wouldn’t really be a true student of Lakewood U if I didn’t know all about the Lakewood Six, huh?”

Emma gapes. Audrey realizes, mournfully, that she has finished her beer. “Wow, so we’re just going right there, then. Nice.”

Derek ignores her, turning to once again face Emma. He gets up in her face and honest-to-God leers. “’Course, I always thought you were the hottest, even though my friends have it bad for the bleach-blonde one. I was so psyched to learn you were a freshman this year.”

Emma doesn’t shrink away, because she’s obviously dealt with more upsetting shit than this idiot in her life, but she does look kind of dumbfounded. Her slightly-too-big front teeth stick out as she stands there, mouth still slightly agape, searching for the right response to this dude’s total callousness. Desperate not to let Emma flounder, Audrey scrambles for a solution of her own. Before she even realizes what she’s doing, her dumbfuck tipsy brain picks the most extreme option (short of kicking the guy’s ass), and is like, _Hey, yeah, this is probably the best, most rational response_.

Which is how Audrey finds herself placing a hand on the back of Emma’s neck and leaning into her space, and how she hears herself say, just loudly enough, “Hey, babe, you wanna get some air?”

Emma blinks, a split-second of hesitation that definitely doesn’t register for Derek, who now looks hilariously bewildered. “Yeah,” Emma tells Audrey. “Yeah, I do.” She turns to Derek, then wraps an arm around Audrey’s waist. “I think I’m gonna step outside for a little with my girlfriend. Good to see you again, though,” she says, before steering the two of them towards the nearest exit.

It’s all Audrey can do to keep up with Emma’s steps, which beat out a quick tempo not unlike Audrey’s own heart, as her brain screams along to the tune of _girlfriendgirlfriendgirlfriendgirlfriendgirlfriend_. She steals a glance back at Derek before he’s swallowed by the crowd and can’t help but think, as she takes in his nonplussed expression, _Same_.

It’s a relief to be outside: the air is cooler, and they flee right before “Dynamite” fades into Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie.” Escaping the party also means that Emma finally removes her hand from around Audrey’s waist, which means Audrey can stop focusing on remembering how to breathe normally.

“God, what is with that DJ?” Emma laughs. “It was like a middle school dance in there.”

“Yeah,” Audrey supplies intelligently. Because that’s what she needs to be reminded of right now. Middle school.

Emma sighs, leaning against the dorm’s brick exterior. “You’re officially right. I have the worst taste in guys.”

“I don’t know man, I think I saw a love connection back there,” Audrey says, falling in line next to Emma.

“Shut up,” Emma replies with a chuckle. She leans over, bumps her shoulder against Audrey’s. “Thanks for having my back in there.”

Audrey looks up at her, at the way the dorm’s doorway light illuminates a halo of flyaways above her head. She feels stupid, so idiotic for letting this go on as long as she has without just saying _something_ , anything to get it all out in the open so that she can just move on and be Emma’s friend for real. But she thinks about the last time she’d been honest with Emma, about how the other girl hadn’t known what to say when she found out the real reason behind their friend break-up way back when, and she knows she can’t go down that road again. Something deep inside her aches, too, when she thinks about how that adolescent rejection had turned her into something evil, something willing to hurt Emma and everyone the girl dared to love more than her. She feels sick, and it has nothing to do with the alcohol.

“I’ll always have your back, Em,” Audrey finally says, because that’s that, and it can mean nothing and everything at the same time. She’s eternally grateful when Emma changes the subject.

 

\--

 

On Monday, Audrey stumbles into philosophy—the only morning class she’d dared to schedule for herself—and slips into a seat next to Emma. Emma peppers Audrey with questions about their Heidegger essay, despite Audrey’s insistence that she _didn’t do the reading, oh my God, seriously_ , and both girls are too distracted to notice that someone else has replaced their professor at the front of the class.

“—as Professor Alvarez will be out on maternity leave for some weeks, she’s made it my duty as your usually-invisible TA to keep discussions alive and assignments flowing in the interim,” the newcomer intones over the chattering students.

Audrey snaps to attention after a moment, because she recognizes that voice, even though something about it is—different. Emma follows Audrey’s gaze, her eyes widening as she comes to the same conclusion.

“It will be my utmost pleasure to work closely with each and every one of you,” the speaker continues, locking eyes awkwardly with Audrey before continuing on, “over the next few weeks.”

“Oh, God,” Audrey murmurs.

There, in a button-down and khakis, wielding a PowerPoint remote, is Derek.


	2. are you ten years ago

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it begins

"Audrey, Emma, if you wouldn't mind staying behind for a minute."

Audrey winces, her messenger bag halfway to her shoulder, before taking a deep breath and nodding to an equally wary Emma. "Yeah," the other girl replies coolly. "Of course."

The girls descend the steps of the lecture hall, students filing out behind them as Derek packs his bag. Audrey follows Emma, who walks straight-backed and unafraid. Audrey's hands are shaking. She wishes, briefly, that she could put one on the small of Emma's back, draw in some of the other girl's strength just by being close to her. It's not like casual touches are a new and forbidden thing in their relationship, or something, but this is uncharted territory.

It's a small comfort to see that, up close, Derek looks about as comfortable interacting with them as they are with him. "I wanted to, uh, apologize, obviously," he starts awkwardly. "I'm extremely embarrassed, I mean, if I'd known—"

"What, so it's okay to scam on girls like that if they're not your students?" Audrey spits. "Gee, I hope next time you double-check your syllabus before objectifying another teenager."

Emma studies the bland-blue carpet. Derek, clearly shaken, tries appealing to her. "It would just mean a lot to me if we could start fresh," he pleads. "I meant what I said in class, I really do value my job as a TA and my ability to work closely with students, and I understand if you're not comfortable with the idea of that, given the current circumstances, but I really want to make it up to you and show you—both of you—that I'm good at my job." He even looks at Audrey again. "I'm sorry."

"Hmph," Audrey snorts, bouncing the toe of her boot against the carpet. The three of them stand there, tense, for what feels like a year. 

Finally, Derek realizes something, and breaks the silence to scramble for a piece of paper in his bag. "You both signed up for my office hours, right?" he asks, before extracting the spreadsheet in question. "Yes! Emma Duval, next Thursday, Audrey Jensen, tomorrow morning."

"You said it was mandatory," Audrey intones flatly.

"Right. Right, but—" Derek flattens the piece of paper against the side of his podium and drums his fingers against it. "I would be more than willing to see both of you in one slot, if that would help." He addresses Emma again. "Honestly, bring your girlfriend. I want you—both—to be comfortable in this class."

Emma looks up at Audrey at that last bit, and Audrey does her best to keep it together as she remembers that, right, they pretended to date. That happened. Was still happening. Right now. Apparently.

Emma places a hand on Audrey's shoulder, runs her thumb against her neck in soft, grounding strokes. "You gonna be okay?"

It's the kind of interaction that happens all the time between them as just-friends, the sort of physical and emotional closeness that can't help but follow a pair around when they've been through as much together as Audrey and Emma have. Still, though, here, where they're defensively reinventing themselves, transforming from Audrey and Emma into Audrey-and-Emma, it's so different. It's not bad, Audrey realizes, but. It hurts.

She puts that hurt down somewhere deep, though, somewhere where it can't harm Emma or anybody else, and she nods. "Yeah," Audrey replies quietly, before turning back to Derek. "That's fine," she tells him bluntly.

"Great. Great, thank you," he replies, consulting his office hours schedule one last time. "Your slot, then, Audrey? The tomorrow morning?"

Emma nods, glancing at Audrey again. "Works for me." She almost looks—nervous? Scared? But that's probably just Audrey projecting.

 

\--

 

"Audrey Jensen, you just made the stupidest decision of your life! What are you going to do now?" Noah asks in a corny reporter's voice.

"I'm going to Disney World!" she shouts enthusiastically, before slapping his Zoom audio recorder out of her face. She puts her head down on the table between them and groans.

Noah waits for her breathing to return back to normal—usually a solid sign that Audrey's rage had subsided—before hesitantly asking, "We have to like, actually talk about this now, right? Like, you're actually going to address this with me, correct?"

Audrey raises one eye from the comfort of her jacket-covered arms. "Do I have to?"

It's Noah's turn at frustration. "Do you have t—Audrey, yes! What? Yes!" He sputters. Repressing feelings for your best friend for—what,  _years?_ —and then trying to fake date her is like, probably going to be really emotionally taxing, and I'm offering to talk about it with you so that you don't just, like, lock yourself in the kickboxing studio for the rest of the semester! You're welcome!"

"Okay, one, I am  _begging_ you to stop yelling about this in the middle of the student union. Like, just,  _begging._ " Noah leans back, his mouth in a contrite grimace, and crosses his arms over his chest. "Two, you're my best friend, too, and I'm sorry I haven't talked to you about this, but." Audrey sighs. "You can't keep secrets."

"I can't keep se—what about when I stole your phone and then slipped it back into your bag without you knowing? That was, like, the smoothest moment of my entire life."

"Yeah, my phone which you stole because you thought I was a killer, something you ended up telling Emma about after, I don't know, a day," Audrey retorts. Noah opens and closes his mouth in an attempt to formulate a response. He settles on silence. "All I'm saying," Audrey continues, "is if you tell Stavo about this, Stavo is going to tell Brooke, and Brooke is going to tell Emma, and I am going to die. So. Please."

Noah leans in, the picture of sincerity. "Audrey, I'm not—I mean, I won't. I promise."

"Good."

A tense-yet-comfortable silence settles over the two of them, and Audrey turns her attention back to her storyboard assignment for Intro to Video Production. She chooses to ignore Noah's still-concerned stare, until—

"And, I mean, I'm just saying, if anyone knows what it's like to have harbored feelings for their best friend, it's me, so—"

"Dude,  _no_ ," Audrey winces. "We made a pact to never—God, finish your midterm."

Noah retreats behind his laptop screen, though Audrey can still hear the occasional mutter of "Just saying" amidst his furious typing and clicking. She rolls her eyes affectionately and returns to her work. She knew Noah meant well, but, seriously, some things warranted burying. And then cementing over. Twice.

She's almost finished deciding between a close-up and a medium close-up for scene three, shot five, when Noah pipes up again.

"Um, Audrey?"

"Yeah?" Medium close-up, definitely. No need to get dramatic before Act One is even complete.

"Looks like we don't have to worry about my secret-keeping abilities. Uh, or, you know. Lack thereof."

Audrey sighs, finishes jotting something down before dropping her pencil. "Noah, what are you even talking about—"

She cuts herself off, though, because Noah is staring at her, eyes wide and face pale, with his computer screen turned around to face her. Noah's on one of the thousand true crime fanboy websites he frequents, and, blazoned across his browser, in headline-huge font, is the worst sentence Audrey's ever read in her life—

_**LAKEWOOD SIXERS AUDREY JENSEN AND EMMA DUVAL FIND LOVE AT LAKEWOOD U** _

Oh, and there's a picture.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> stay tuned for the next chapter, featuring Straight Ally Brooke Maddox
> 
> tfw you're a film student and you just make audrey and noah do the same sh*t you had to do back in the day


	3. soil, soil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Wh—why would this be harder for Audrey than it is for me?” Emma rubs a sore spot in the center of her forehead. It feels like she hasn’t un-scrunched her eyebrows in hours.
> 
> “Hoo, boy, we have to start there? Okay.” Brooke does a full three-sixty spin in her desk chair. “One, since Audrey is actually gay, any messed up shit people say about you guys is actually going to affect her. Two, some might argue she did a nice thing for you by starting all of this in the first place, so she’s being a really good friend with, again, some might argue, no payoff. Three—” Brooke shrugs, gazing off into the distance, like she’s seeing something Emma doesn’t. Or like she’s really uninterested. Brooke sighs. “Three, Audrey’s always had kind of a thing for you, so. You know. Be nice, maybe.”

Brooke takes a moment to skim the article, her well-penciled eyebrows raising incrementally at each new line. When she reaches the picture, she purses her lips, then grimaces. Emma watches torturously, playing idly with her trackpad.

“Well, it’s not great,” Brooke starts, her voice staticky through Emma’s computer speakers. “The picture is…incriminating.”

Emma switches to tapping the keys on her keyboard, idly spelling out “lklklklklk” into her Skype window’s message bar. “I know. I know! What do I do? Random people from high school are, like, Facebook messaging me and congratulating me.”

“Ugh, God, did Brenda Mrozowski message you, too? She always was a gossipy kiss-ass.”

Emma shakes her head, as if resetting herself. “I’m sorry—people are messaging _you_ about this?”

Brooke looks at her screen like it’s a last-season handbag. “Um, I’m both of your best friends besides each other, so, yeah, the world didn’t stop because I moved up North.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” Emma sighs. “I just—this whole thing is really stressful.”

“Yeah, I bet,” Brooke intones dryly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just, like, this is probably harder for Audrey than it is for you, babe. And if it’s really so horrible for you anyway, break it off.” Brooke picks something off of her sleeve then flicks it into the air, somehow bored and compassionate simultaneously.

“Wh—why would this be harder for Audrey than it is for me?” Emma rubs a sore spot in the center of her forehead. It feels like she hasn’t un-scrunched her eyebrows in hours.

“Hoo, boy, we have to start _there_? Okay.” Brooke does a full three-sixty spin in her desk chair. “One, since Audrey is actually gay, any messed up shit people say about you guys is _actually_ going to affect her. Two, some might argue she did a nice thing for  you by starting all of this in the first place, so she’s being a really good friend with, again, some might argue, no payoff. Three—” Brooke shrugs, gazing off into the distance, like she’s seeing something Emma doesn’t. Or like she’s really uninterested. Brooke sighs. “Three, Audrey’s always had kind of a thing for you, so. You know. Be nice, maybe.”

Emma scoffs. “What, because she had a crush on me in middle school? No. No, Audrey doesn’t like me that way. I would know.”

Brooke tilts her head. “Audrey had a crush on you in middle school?”

“That’s not funny, Brooke, I told you about how she said that during the—” Emma squirms at the unpleasant-confusing-bizarre memory, unsure how to dodge its emotional weight. “When we were looking for Noah, a few years ago. I know I told you.”

“Um, no, Emma, you didn’t.” Brooke looks full-on at her screen now, at Emma, no bullshit distractions. “Trust me, my therapist says I blocked some shit out, but I would have remembered that one.”

“I could’ve sworn I—wait, so, what were you talking about? Why do you think Audrey’s interested in me?”

Brooke sighs, then rolls her eyes, then sighs again. Then, her image gets more pixelated, her movements more fragmented. Her words come out in short, borderline-inaudible bursts.

“’Cause—I—idiot—you—would—”

And then Skype drops the call.

Emma’s phone chimes almost immediately with a text from Brooke.

**Dorm wifi can SMD. Gotta run 2 English anyway tho. Talk later? xoxoxo**

Emma groans in frustration. She grudgingly types back a response—

_Yeah, have a good class. Love you._

When Skype asks her to rate the quality of her video chat, she only gives it two stars.

 

\--

 

The picture’s not great, both in terms of quality and how much it’s affected Audrey’s psyche. It’s a grainy cell phone close-up, clearly taken by someone at the back of the lecture hall yesterday as Audrey and Emma had put up a front for TA Derek. In the photo, Emma’s hand is on Audrey, at the spot where her neck meets her shoulder, and Audrey looks up at her, like—like—

Audrey drags a hand over her tired eyes, her palms clammy with sweat from a well-shaken cocktail of sleep deprivation and anxiety. She zooms in on the photo on her phone, like staring at it for another ten or twenty (or thirty) minutes will make it mean what she wants.

—like she’s screwed.

Audrey hears the click-clack of Emma’s wood-sole sandals on the old library floor before she sees her, and scrambles to close the window on her phone. She grabs her bag off of the chair beside her, and waves, lamely, as Emma rounds the corner. She looks—less shiny, somehow. Like her dress is a little wrinkled, or she forgot to use her weird Swedish leave-in conditioner this morning, or both. But Audrey’s probably just gotten way too practiced at reading into things in the last twelve hours.

“Hey,” Emma chirps, and Audrey mentally chastises herself for thinking the girl was even kind of losing sleep over this whole mess. “You okay? You look a little off.”

Audrey shrugs, before plastering on her most sardonic grin. “Just super-psyched to hang out with my best friend, Derek,” she says, complete with ironic fist pump.

It doesn’t earn her the laugh she’s aiming for. Somehow, Emma looks even more concerned. “Hey, look, Audrey.” Her voice is kind, lowered, which somehow makes Audrey’s anxiety skyrocket. “This is stupid, right? I mean, we seriously don’t have to do this anymore, if you don’t want to. Derek obviously cares a lot about his job, and, like—I don’t know, things are kind of out of control, with the article. We should probably stop. Right?”

Emma looks unsure, questioning in a way that Audrey’s realized she only lets slip when they’re together. It’s disconcerting to see on a girl who’s lived this long because of the determination in her step and the steel in her veins. It throws Audrey a little, the same way that Emma’s first question does.

_This is stupid, right?_

“I don’t know,” Audrey says, because being around Emma makes her want to be honest, just like Emma can be vulnerable. “I mean, what would we say? ‘Hey, so, we broke up last night, can we have our separate office hours meetings back now?’ And then what, we act like we don’t want to be around each other in class for the rest of the semester?” Audrey shrugs. “Like, yeah, this kind of sucks, but that would probably suck more.”

Emma looks at her, considering. She chooses her words carefully before she speaks. “This is—I mean, you’re okay, right? Like, this isn’t—harmful to you, or something, I mean.”

“Why—um, why would you think that?” And just like that, honesty goes out the window, as Audrey tries to fight for what little scrap of gay dignity she has left. “Like, being off the market for a little is going to suck, but, whatever,” she laughs. It’s a riotous performance. Cate Blanchett, eat your heart out.

It’s unclear whether or not Emma buys it for a second, because she just kind of looks away, but when she faces Audrey again, she’s smiling. “Yeah, okay, you’re right. Sorry.” After a beat, she adds, “Thanks, babe,” in a stupid voice, and fuck Audrey if it doesn’t almost make her pinch herself anyway.

“No problem, sweetie,” she replies as a cover. Emma grimaces.

“Ugh, _sweetie_? What am I, your granddaughter?”

Audrey laughs, genuinely, for what feels like the first time in days. “Right, right, sorry, babe,” she corrects herself. It almost sounds natural, too.

The two of them just kind of sit there, outside of Derek’s office, looking at each other. It’s what Audrey would call A Moment, if she was the kind of person to get her hopes up. Still, when Derek creaks open his office door to welcome them in, she swears she sees Emma shake herself off a bit, as if exiting a kind of trance.

But it’s probably just a trick of the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tbh seasonal affective disorder and general lack of will to live got me WRECK'D these past few days but then bex came out and i felt rejuvinated/obligated to update this. sorry for not doing it sooner!
> 
> p.s. chapter titles now include Even More Tegan and Sara, because once in an interview bex said that audrey would have a bunch of t&s on her iPod and now i've basically lost my mind
> 
> p.p.s. Next Up on Dark Come Soon: emotional sleepovers! romantic deception! sarcasm! MOM?!


	4. light up

By Audrey's count, at the end of Gaypocalypse: Day One, they've been congratulated by fifteen strangers, thirty-seven acquaintances, and one and a half friends. The friends were Stavo and Noah, the former of whom had not yet checked his texts from Brooke before sending along a heartfelt "saw the article, good for u," and the latter of whom was a sarcastic bitch.

"Well, at least things can only die down from here," Emma says, lazily scrolling through her Facebook notifications (21 new message requests!). She leans against her bed, her bare feet buried in the long faux fur of her pale green rug.

"Hey, don't jinx us," Audrey pipes up across from her. She's sitting with her legs splayed out in front of her, her fingers toying with the soft fibers of the rug. If she wanted to, she could move her foot just a bit and tap Emma's ankle. If she wanted to, she could use her toes to mess with the embroidery thread friendship bracelet Emma's worn there ever since Riley made it for her four years ago. Just if she wanted to, though. Hypothetically.

They're having a sleepover, which is what they do when Emma's roommate Katherine ("Not Katie, not Kate, Kath-er-ine") is out all night doing creepy sorority hazing stuff. Audrey warily eyes the Phi Kappa Kappa-embossed paddle nailed to the opposite wall, courtesy of Katherine's Big. How did sorority shit manage to be so gay, yet so straight?

"There's a poll on Twitter about what our couple name should be," Emma says, like the word "couple" somehow doesn't weigh a million pounds. "Most people like 'Emrey.'"

"Ugh, 'Emrey'?" Audrey scoffs. It even tastes weird as she says it. "That sounds like a baby name some blonde twenty-year-old Florida girl came up with. It's the 'Lakynn' of couple names."

"Vivid." Emma scans her phone again. "Better than 'Audma,' though."

"God, true. Whatever happened to combining last names?" Audrey puts her hands in front of her, as if imagining her words on a billboard. "Jenval," she announces dramatically.

Emma smiles. "I could get behind Jenval." She finally, blessedly puts her phone down. "They kind of all sound okay to me, though, to be honest."

Audrey clears her throat before answering, because for the past few days, Emma has been saying a lot of things that Audrey has to pretend don't plow over her heart like a bulldozer. She needs to take a beat.

"Um, yeah," is what she offers in the end.

They settle into a silence that's not awkward, but also not them. Audrey mentally recounts the people who have congratulated her. Them. The tally of people who believe that there is a universe in which Emma Duval could have feelings for Audrey Jensen, the way that Audrey Jensen has feelings for Emma Duval. Two people would have been overwhelming. Fifty-three and a half makes her feel like her throat's closing up.

But for Emma, it's just another day. "Hey, you still need me for your script reading, right?"

Audrey snaps to attention, scrambling to remember dates and deadlines. T-minus three weeks until the rough draft of her script was due, one month until their readings. She needed to schedule at least two rehearsals by then. "Yeah, I mean, if you're still down," Audrey shrugs.

"I don't know, are you ever going to show me the script?"

Audrey hesitates before pulling her backpack over from across the floor and rummaging through. It's like a time capsule in there: crumpled up syllabi support bent notebooks and a small mountain of uncapped pens (how are they ALL uncapped?). There may be a weeks-old piece of cafeteria fruit in there, too, but Audrey is sure not to betray any sign of such disgustingness on her face as she uproots the script. It is, miraculously, sans food stains or irreparable tearing. She slaps it down in front of Emma.

"Woah." Emma blinks, hefting the weight of the script. "You're not even done yet? This is, like, fifty pages long."

“Read it and weep,” Audrey retorts. “But actually, if you do, that would be, like, really flattering, because it’s a drama and also the first feature-length script I’ve ever started.”

Emma smirks. “I’m sure I’ll be crying buckets by the end.”

“Good, because I want you to play the lead, so you need to really feel it,” Audrey tosses back, like it’s nothing, like Emma playing her protagonist was something she’d just thought of, like what she’d like to eat for breakfast in the morning.

“Seriously?” Emma shakes her head, tucking a hair behind her ear that wasn’t out of place to begin with. “I’m, like, not an actor.”

“Yeah, but, this script is, like, my baby, and I want you to have the biggest part in it, because I trust you.” Audrey scoffs, “Or, you know. Something less corny.”

Emma raises an eyebrow. “‘I want you to carry my baby. No homo.’ Audrey Jensen.”

 

\--

 

Two hours later, they’ve paused a crappy Lifetime movie because it’s boring (“The husband did it, the husband always does it,” Emma says ten minutes in) and they have better things to talk about anyway. They lie sideways on Mega Bed, their shared name for what happens when Kath-er-ine is off with her sisters and they get to push her bed against Emma’s. Emma’s white Ikea comforter clashes horribly with Katherine’s Vera Bradley duvet, and the pillows are everywhere. They talk until they laugh so hard that they forget what they’re talking about, bodies curled towards each other like parentheses.

Sometimes it doesn’t make sense to Emma that this isn’t all love is: calling someone your best friend and sinking into space with them like slipping under the water of a warm bath. Audrey grins, her dark eyes shining as she talks animatedly, and Emma’s head suddenly buzzes with Brooke’s words from before.

Later, during a lull in the conversation—the kind of comfortable pause that slips in between secrets when you’re somewhere in between awake and asleep—she asks. She stares at the ceiling, its ugly speckled tiles bouncing in and out of shapelessness, and says, “Hey, Audrey? You’re okay, right?”

“Hmm?” The other girl murmurs, her eyes already half closed.

“I mean, this isn’t bad for you, right? If it is, we can stop. I mean, in my head, it doesn’t even make sense, anyway, but then it just—does, somehow.” She sighs. “I think I’m just trying to say, if you want to stop, that’s okay. Even if I don’t think we should.”

She doesn’t even remember saying that last part, just says it, and then it’s out loud, hanging in the air between them before she even knows what it means. It’s not wrong, factually: her relationship with Audrey is the most natural one she’s ever had, the most tumultuous and loving and complicated and wonderful. There is more between them than there ever has been between her and a boyfriend; Emma knows this. There’s just this missing layer that Emma can’t seem to get her mind around, a block between the part of her that feels more at home here, half-hanging off of a stranger’s bed with Audrey, and the part of her that grew up being told she would make some handsome man very happy one day. She knows this warmth between them feels right, but she doesn’t know what to call it. Even if she did, she thinks she would be scared to give it a name.

The words float there between them, an invisible precipice that Emma can’t fall off of or pull Audrey onto. Her phone lights up in the soft darkness, One Unheard Voicemail from her mom.

She finally turns her head to the side to look at Audrey, to see if she can answer any of her unspoken questions. She braces herself for outrage, confusion, and—scariest of all—understanding.

But the girl is already asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BITCH NEVER LEFT BUT I'M BACK AT IT
> 
> sorry for hating "Emrey," but there's your weekly tea! i don't think "Jenval" is any better tho tbf
> 
>  
> 
> me writing audrey: sardonic hyperbole, stumbling metaphors, self-deprecation, this is an episode of Couple-ish  
> me writing emma: everything is soft, your thoughts are like specks of dust caught in the air and illuminated by a nearby window, this is a sofia coppolla movie


	5. nineteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So she's—” Audrey starts, the little wrinkles in her forehead growing deeper.
> 
> “This weekend, yeah,” Emma finishes for her.
> 
> “So we should—”
> 
> “We don't have to.”
> 
> “But she would—”
> 
> “Yeah.” Emma snakes a finger around a lock of her hair. “Yeah, I know.”
> 
> Audrey huffs out a sigh, a leftover habit from her bygone days of high school bangs. Now, with her hair barely finger-length at the top, there's no floppy fringe to blow away.
> 
> “Shit,” she finally says, her left thumb in her mouth. “Defcon Maggie.”

It takes Emma a long time to fall asleep, because it always does, now. Sleep comes a bit easier with Audrey around, since her mere presence somehow sands down the sharp edges of Emma’s thoughts. Audrey had stayed over at her house every night for a month after they caught Kieran, a constant, fierce presence warming the other side of the bed, as if daring nightmares to visit them both. It worked; Emma’s nightmares faded away to nothing after a few weeks.

Still, she heard Audrey wake up suddenly nearly every night, or caught the way her dark hair was matted by sweat in the morning. Emma knew the dreams were about Rachel, sometimes Piper, because now and again Audrey would whisper their names in her sleep. They never talked about it, though—every morning, Audrey greeted Emma with a smile and a low, “You sleep okay?” And that was that.

When Emma falls asleep tonight, she has a dream—not a nightmare, not an obsessive recounting of her every trauma, not (worst of all) a happy dream about Kieran or Piper—a regular, nonsensical dream.

She and Audrey are at the Zenith, about to see a movie. Audrey doesn’t speak the entire time, just hands her the popcorn and opens a box of Buncha Crunch. Emma tries to mix them together, but she can’t. Audrey takes off her black and red uniform vest and hands it to Emma. Emma, somehow understanding, shrugs the slightly-too-small garment on, feels the fabric tighten around her shoulders. When she shakes the popcorn tub again, the candy and popcorn finally combines. In the dream, she laughs delightedly, and then she wakes up.

As she slowly comes out of her dream, she feels some shift in weight next to her, and opens her eyes to find she has an arm slung around Audrey’s waist. She hesitates, then leaves it there, content to close her eyes for another hour or two.

When she wakes up again, it's early, so she quietly moves and sits at the edge of the bed, rubbing the sleep from her eyes and adjusting her loose ponytail. Her phone blinks up at her, reminding her of the unheard voicemail from her mom. She picks it up and selects the new message, unconsciously steeling herself for bad news.

The message ends after thirty-four seconds. Emma picks at a loose bit of skin next to her thumbnail. She takes a deep breath, and exhales slowly.

_Crap._

****

\--

****

Audrey wakes up from a dreamless sleep, blinking into the light filtering in through Emma’s pale yellow curtains. She sees Emma sitting at the edge of the bed, her phone in hand. She's chewing on her fingernails, because that's what Emma does when something is wrong. It suddenly, horrifyingly registers with Audrey that _something is wrong_ , and she sits up.

“Everything okay?” she asks Emma, and the other girl starts. “Fuck, oh my God, sorry—” Audrey says, because the last thing she wants to do, ever, is scare Emma, but Emma is already facing her, smiling.

“No, _I’m_ sorry, I'm—it's fine.” Emma let's out a breath, shakes her head like she's erasing an Etch-a-Sketch feeling. “I just didn't know you were up.”

Audrey eyes the finger Emma has looped around a lock of her hair. “You sure you're good?”

They do this, sometimes, sit in silence until one of them works up the courage to voice difficult thoughts. More often Audrey is the one who doesn't want to talk, who bottles everything up so tight that it's no surprise when it all comes bursting out. Usually, when Emma doesn't want to tell Audrey something ( _I get nightmares whenever you don't sleep here, I'm sorry I didn't know about Piper sooner, I wish I could be as brave as you_ ), it's because she doesn't want to hurt her. This time, it's because—well, she's not really sure why. This is new ground.

But, when it comes to this game, she's never been able to hold out long. “My mom called,” Emma tells Audrey, and her shoulders fall.

“What why is everything okay?” Audrey bites it out like it's all one word, kicking the covers off of her bare legs and sitting up fully. Her shoulders are taut, and she edges closer to Emma. Even in a tank top and a  pair of red flannel boxers, she looks ready to fight.

“No, no, nothing bad. At least—not like that. She's fine.” Emma turns to her phone, resetting the message so that it'll play from the beginning. She hands it to Audrey. “Here, she left me this last night.”

Audrey grips the phone tightly, the thin grey-green vein that runs between her knuckles starkly pronounced from her pale skin. As she listens to the message, brow furrowed, Emma notices her fingernails. Audrey keeps them neatly trimmed, makes a point to cut them every other day (before bed, over a trash can because _We’re not savages, Emma Jean Duval_ ). The cuticles underneath her thumbs are a wreck, though. She always bites her thumb when she's nervous. Emma looks at her own nails, anxiously picked short. They haven't been long since she was a little girl.

When she finishes the message, Audrey stares at the phone for a long moment before turning her gaze on Emma. She's lost in thought, brow furrowed. Emma gets it. That was her ten minutes ago. That's still her, now—but she's always been less dramatic than Audrey.

“So she's—” Audrey starts, the little wrinkles in her forehead growing deeper.

“This weekend, yeah,” Emma finishes for her.

“So we should—”

“We don't have to.”

“But she would—”

“Yeah.” Emma snakes a finger around a lock of her hair. “Yeah, I know.”

Audrey huffs out a sigh, a leftover habit from her bygone days of high school bangs. Now, with her hair barely finger-length at the top, there's no floppy fringe to blow away.

“Shit,” she finally says, her left thumb in her mouth. “Defcon Maggie.”

****

\--

****

Parents’ Weekend falls on a sunny September Saturday, and everything at LU has an extra shine. The grass is freshly mown, the buildings’ windows gleam.

“Hell, even dining hall food has suddenly become edible,” Noah proclaims over breakfast, halfway to finishing his third helping of eggs Benedict.

“It’s okay,” Audrey says into her second cup of coffee, the small bowl of peanut butter cereal at her side untouched.

Noah cranes his neck down, in an attempt to get on her sullen eye level. “You wanna talk about it, champ?”

“Maggie’s visiting today. For Parents’ Weekend.” She runs a hand over her close-cropped hair, another leftover nervous habit. “She wants to see the happy couple.”

“Who?”

Audrey levels him with a scalding glare. Noah goes on a full-blown face journey in the middle of the cafeteria, one piece of sausage sliding glumly off of his fork.

“ _Oh_.”

“‘Oh,’ indeed, Professor Foster. Astutely observed.”

“I mean...are you okay? Is _this_ okay? Is this maybe a good stopping point for like, arduous-loyalty-as-self-harm?” His voice cracks on the last word.

Audrey huffs out a breath, something between a laugh and a scoff, mired in disbelief and shame and frustration. “I don't know!” She punctuates the desperate announcement by throwing up her hands. “Maggie and Emma, I mean—when my mom had to go away? When my dad threw himself into scripture and work and fixing everyone else’s problems except ours? They were my family. They _are_ my family, now, even if it's not…” she sighs, trailing off, “like that.”

Noah thinks for a moment. When he regards Audrey again, it's with the same soul-crushing sincerity that drew her to him back in high school—Audrey was closed off, and Noah was vulnerable. They're complementary.

“You're allowed to put yourself first sometimes, you know,” he tells her. It's not the first time.

Audrey shakes her head. “Not now,” she answers, refusing to meet his gaze. “Not with this.”

****

\--

****

_Hi, Emma, it's your mom. I, uh, well. I heard about you and Audrey, and I just wanted to call to let you know how much I love you. The both of you. Parents’ Weekend starts on Saturday, and I know you think it's corny and you don't want me to go because you're doing your own thing and I—honey, you're so independent, and I love that about you. But it would mean the world to me to see you girls before Christmas. So, think it over, call me back. I can't bring myself to watch the Dance Moms episodes piling up on our DVR, because I miss you too much, so you're really in for it come December. Okay, I’m hanging up now, I promise. I love you._

Emma knows the message by heart now, she's listened to it at least thirty times since it came in. She's never heard her mom sound like this, so wistful and preoccupied, somehow nostalgic for something that hasn't even yet happened. It's fucking scary.

They stand in Audrey’s dorm room, in front of the crack in the wall that passes for a closet. Audrey, arms crossed, stares into the abyss of black and earth tones. She's almost due for a haircut, Emma notices: black stubble is stubbornly reforming in a messy pattern around her ears. Soon, like she does every few weeks, she'll ask Emma to fix it up with the $20 Wahl clippers she bought online. That is, Emma figures, if this weekend doesn't make everything go to shit.

“I don't want to look like I'm trying too hard,” Audrey pipes up, worrying at her bottom lip with her thumb.

“So don't try too hard,” Emma tells her, again. “She knows what you look like, she's seen your clothes evolve for, like, ten years.”

“But she hasn't seen, you know—” Audrey gestures to her shorter hair, her lack of makeup “—the past few months.”

There’s been a change in Audrey, to be sure. Since the start of their senior summer, which the girls had spent exploring Europe with Brooke, Audrey’s appearance has shifted. Not jarringly, Emma thinks, more like the girl has grown into the correct realization of herself. Audrey picked up looser-fitting clothing in various secondhand shops; she tried on men’s shoes for the first time in a kitschy store in London. She carries herself with more confidence, now, lighter on her feet despite her heavy boots. Emma notices—it would be impossible not to, she reasons—as do countless girls along their trip. Brooke teased and prodded Audrey about it, making her blush despite her new bravado. Audrey didn't follow up with any of her suitors. She told Emma and Brooke it was because they were leaving, anyway. No need to get attached.

Emma pulls a short-sleeve collared shirt out of the closet. It's navy, with a subtle pattern, one of the only department store buys Audrey had allowed Brooke to make on her behalf. “It really brings out your eyes,” Emma recalls saying lamely, after Audrey had exited the dressing room, adjusting the collar and nervously smoothing down her hair.

“Wear this one,” Emma says, handing Audrey the hanger. She accepts the shirt without a fight, placing it on the bed reverently and running a hand across the buttons.

“Cool, yeah,” Audrey mutters to herself, and turns to rifle through her dresser for a pair of slim-fit brown chinos.

When Audrey undresses, it's an unconscious thing, because she's been changing in front of Emma for the past decade. Still, as she pulls off her sleep-rumpled T-shirt and sweats to reveal a matching black sports bra and boxer briefs, Emma finds herself looking away. It's like the energy in the room shifts. It strikes Emma that this is the first time she's ever really caught herself looking—staring?—at Audrey. She wonders, superficially, if she’s done it before, even though the flush in her cheeks reminds her that she has.

Audrey fastens the last button on her shirt, then looks up at Emma, something between determination and gut-wrenching anxiety playing out on her face. “You ready?” Audrey asks her.

Emma only has to take a step or two to get close to the other girl. She frames Audrey’s neck with her hands, smoothing out the stiff, blue collar of her shirt. She doesn't even think about it before she does it, but Audrey is gazing up at her with eyes full of _something_ , and she realizes that this is the kind of thing she would be doing if she and Audrey were legitimately about to go meet her mom as a couple for the first time. The moment is suddenly, terrifyingly, intimate. It's enough to make Emma take a step back.

“Yeah,” she tells Audrey, softer than she means it. Suddenly, her head is swimming. “Yeah, I'm ready.”

****

\--

****

The girls agree to meet Maggie out on the academic quad, a beautiful expanse of manically well-kept grass that flanks the visitor parking lot and divides the main library from the key humanities, science, and arts buildings. They hardly say a word to each other during the short walk there, each lost in thought. They get to the entrance of Hunter Hall for the Natural Sciences five minutes early, though, and are left to add stillness to the maddening mix of silence and tension.

Emma has fastidiously shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, a deceptively relaxed pose that, Audrey notes, she adopts when seriously stressed out. Desperate to diffuse the building silence between them and ease Emma’s nerves, Audrey blurts out something she immediately regrets.

“We should probably hold hands.”

Once she says it, she waits for the other shoe to drop, for Emma to raise her eyebrows and lay her bare, reopen old teenaged wounds with fresh rejection. It's irrational, Audrey knows, because holding hands isn't exactly new for them. It was how she comforted Emma, even back in high school, when rumors flew left and right about the Popular Girl and the Dyke. This is different, though, this is fake and real all at the same time, and Audrey thinks it's only a matter of time before Emma realizes everything, and the jig is up.

This time, though, a small smile breaks through the worry on Emma’s face, and she offers an outstretched hand to Audrey like a lifeline. Audrey threads her fingers through Emma’s, because, go big or go fucking home, and her palms are sweaty and her shirt collar is chafing her, but suddenly the terror of this meeting gets a lot smaller. More manageable.

“I think she's gonna like you,” Emma stage whispers, squeezing Audrey’s hand.

“Oh man, do you really think so?” Audrey quips back, and for a moment they get to laugh, and things feel as easy as they always have.

That's how Maggie finds them, holding onto each other and full of joy, sharing space in a way that two people can only do after years of carefully cultivated trust. She greets them with a grin, eyes gleaming. She tells them how amazing it is to see them, the unspoken _together_ hanging in the air.

“You look incredible,” she tells Audrey, “so—handsome.” Emma winks at Audrey as Maggie pulls her into a hug.

“Isn't that a great shirt?” she asks Maggie, teasing braggadocio lilting her voice as she raises an eyebrow at Audrey.

As they walk back to the dining hall, they chat about various Lakewood inanities and the weather, classes and professors. It all feels so normal, so right.

For a second, Audrey lets herself pretend it's not a lie.

****

\--

****

There's an open bar at the parents’ reception in the lobby, and Maggie, like her daughter, gets chatty and affectionate when tipsy. She tells the girls shyly about her disastrous attempts at online dating, about how one guy had stood her up twice. Audrey cavalierly reminds her that men are stupid, sending the woman into a fit of laughs.

“You guys have the right idea, huh?” she says, once recovered, raising a mischievous eyebrow at Emma. “If only I could date women.”

It’s a throwaway Mom comment, one that Audrey’s heard a thousand times from close friends and practical strangers. This time, though, it strikes a nerve, and she’s not sure why. Audrey bites out an insincere laugh before excusing herself to grab some more punch, deftly avoiding Emma’s concerned gaze as she leaves.

“Is she okay?” Maggie asks, and Emma has to fight the protective ferocity fluttering in her chest, bite back the first sardonic comeback that comes to mind.

“Yeah, I think so.” Her voice is calm and steady, self-sacrificing patience honed from years of keeping the peace between her parents. “It’s just that, when people say stuff like that, I think it can make her feel like you’re discounting how hard it is to be gay. This isn’t just some fun thing you can try out.”

Her stomach turns as she says the last bit, the itchy-hot feeling of guilt gnawing at the back of her brain. _Isn’t that what you’re doing?_

Maggie regards her nervous, contemplative daughter. It’s like she’s grown up so much in just the few weeks since they last spoke, become this totally new version of herself. “You’re right,” she tells Emma, “I was being stupid. I’ll say something when she comes back.”

“You’re not stupid,” Emma replies reflexively, a mechanism honed from her upbringing with Maggie, watching her mother try to rebuild and chip away at her own self-esteem.

Maggie puts her free hand on Emma’s shoulder, rubs soothing circles into her tense muscle with her thumb. Suddenly, Emma feels like she might cry. She wishes she could tell her mom everything, ask her advice, admit how scared all of this makes her. She wants to confide in her. She doesn’t know what any of this means, if Audrey’s feelings for her are real or if she’s been mistaking her own deeper feelings for mere friendship for all these years. She doesn’t know if she’s hurting her best friend, if she’s hurting herself. She doesn’t know how to say, out loud, that she thinks she might be attracted to women. She needs her mom.

But her mom needs her, too, and this is the most carefree she’s seen Maggie in what feels like years. She settles for her next-best option, given the circumstances. “Mom, when you found out that we were dating,” she says, heart pounding in her chest, “were you surprised?”

“No,” Maggie answers, shaking her head. “Well—no and yes. I always knew there was something deeper between you two, but I guess I never really figured this would be it.” She laughs, “I mean, my God, Emma, you were so boy crazy for a while there…”

Maggie trails off, ending the thought by awkwardly clearing her throat. She looks at Emma. “I’m really happy for you, honey. I am.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Emma says into her glass of punch. She wants to ask so much more; _There was always something deeper between you two_ dances around in her head, reminding her of all the times Kieran had taunted her and Audrey with their closeness. Before she can say anything else, though, Audrey returns, two glasses of punch in hand.

“Oh, uh, I guess I forgot you already had one,” she tells Emma, awkwardly gesturing with one hand and nearly sloshing punch onto her chunky black wristwatch.

“It's okay, thanks,” Emma chuckles, discarding her empty cup on a nearby table. She gives Audrey a reassuring smile meant to help them both. It does, for a second. Just looking at Audrey has always grounded her.

“Okay, picture time,” Maggie pipes up, extracting her phone and turning it sideways. “Get together.”

Emma’s chest tightens. “You sure you don't want to be in the picture, Mom? We could ask someone else to take it.”

“We can do that in a second,” Maggie replies, waving her off. “I want to get one of just you girls.”

Audrey brushes against Emma’s hand, gently taking the cups from her and putting them on the table behind them. “It's okay,” she tells Emma, her voice low and comforting.

Audrey looks at Emma, so much reflected in her insanely brown eyes that Emma doesn't know how to decode. Audrey’s always had an intense gaze, this subtle power about her that could shift from volcanic and guarded to soft and nurturing so easily. She hardly sees the former side of Audrey anymore, most of her sharp edges worn down by years of slogging through the shit together.

When Audrey looks at her now, close and preparing to get closer, Emma realizes she's not just comfortable around her. Her chest buzzes, and the tips of her ears grow warm, and Emma understands, with alarming clarity, that she _wants_ Audrey. Wants to kiss her, wants to touch her face. She thinks these things—lets herself think them, for the first time—and it's like the world slows down to a stop around her.

The realization can't take more than a second, but when she remembers her mom next to them, phone at the ready, and feels the warm pressure of Audrey’s hand around her waist, it feels like she's re-entering her life from an entirely different reality. She's changed irrevocably, instantaneously, without anybody noticing.

Maggie taps the screen of her phone. Emma leans her head against Audrey’s, puts an arm around her shoulder. She adopts a serene smile, even though to her the air between them feels like it's filled with static.

“Oh, that's a great one,” Maggie declares, smiling affectionately at her screen.

****

\--

****

Audrey, ever the gentleman, walks Emma back to her dorm after Maggie bids adieu for the night. “Because it's dark out,” she tells Emma, and is surprised when, this time, Emma doesn't fight back with, “You're smaller than me,” or, “I know krav maga. You _taught me_ krav maga.”

It's a sizable stroll from the banquet hall to Emma's building, one that Audrey is content to spend in silence beside her best friend. She'd been so worried about how this day would go, and she'd felt under so much pressure, but things had been okay. Maggie was happy, and so were they. The pessimistic side of Audrey’s brain, also known as her entire brain, reminds her that ignorance is bliss.

Or not.

They get to the entrance of Emma’s dorm, a fancy stone structure framing two stately oak doors. Instead of thanking Audrey and stepping inside, though, Emma leans against the stone wall.

“Hey,” she intones. “After you said all that stuff to me in the barn, when we were looking for Noah? Why didn't we ever talk about it?”

“I—uh,” Audrey laugh-chokes-gasps, searching for any kind of coherent thought amidst the unending _?!?!?!?!?!_ in her brain. “I guess I was waiting for you to say something, or ask me something, or something, and then you didn't, and then Noah was stabbed and Zoe was dead and it was—I don't know. And then you grabbed my hand and I figured that we were just, you know.” She swipes at the air, as if shoving something out of the way. “Moving on.”

Emma's face is totally unreadable. It's not fair, Audrey thinks, how she betrays her own emotions so easily, and Emma can be so much subtler. “What if I wanted to ask you something about it now?” Emma counters.

It's like a fifty-pound blow to the stomach, but still, Audrey crosses her arms and says, “I guess I couldn't stop you.”

Emma's back straightens against the wall. “If you don't want to talk about it, we don't have to.”

“No, I'm here. We're talking about it,” Audrey shoots back, because apparently she's a fucking masochist. “Shoot.”

“When you said you loved me—you meant. Like, you were _in_ love with me?”

Emma asks it like _Yes, duh, holy fucking shit yes_ isn't the most obvious answer in the world. She almost looks—vulnerable? Scared? Her shoulders are hunched a little. Her arms are crossed, mirroring Audrey’s. It's like she's caving in on herself.

Right then, Audrey wants to make her smile more than anything else in the world. “Yeah, well, there's this thing lesbians do where we fall for our straight best friends. It's a phenomenon.” She laughs. “Newsflash, Em, I'm a cliché.”

She doesn't add _But also, it's_ you, _how could I not_. But she feels it.

Emma chuckles out a “Yeah, okay,” but then she's back to contemplative and enigmatic. She pauses, then says, “But you stopped feeling that way when we were in high school.”

 _No._ “Yeah.” Audrey shakes her head. “I would never want to mess up our friendship.”

“Yeah,” Emma answers, more afterthought than agreement. “Why me?” she asks, and the sincerity of it, the confusion, hurt Audrey more than anything else Emma’s ever said. For a moment, she's so incredibly angry, a flash of rage that flies over her like a comet.

“ _Because_ ,” she responds. She tries to inject the one word with so many unspoken things that it feels heavy as it leaves her tongue. “Because you're strong, and you're kind, and you're weirdly super funny, even though ninety-nine percent of your humor is puns.”

Emma wrinkles her nose, bites back a laugh. It eggs Audrey on, and her gestures become more emphatic as she talks, her voice higher-pitched. “And you're—Jesus, Em.” She looks up at her, her silhouette framed in the golden light of a nearby lamp post. “You're beautiful.”

Emma stares at her, mouth slightly agape to reveal her front teeth.

When she approaches Audrey, she does it slowly, as if preparing to wake a sleepwalker. It should give Audrey enough time to process what's going on, to react, but she's oblivious, like most people are right before they get the one thing they wanted the most in the world.

“If this is—I’m sorry,” Emma breathes, and then she kisses her.

It only lasts a moment, at first, one of Emma’s hands hesitantly resting on Audrey's shoulder as she leans down. Audrey's eyes are open, and her brain is _screaming_ , and she has no earthly idea what to do here, when she'll wake up from whatever hallucination/dream/fantasy this is. All systems are down, and Audrey is frozen.

Then, Emma pulls away, and Audrey's instincts kick in. Her brain screams _even louder_ , because this life-changing moment is about to be over and she's wasted it in catatonia. Audrey finally comes to her senses.

Before Emma can create more distance between them, Audrey pulls her back in, cradling Emma’s face in her hands. She closes her eyes and does it right this time, feels the entire atmosphere around them explode with electricity as their lips meet. Emma's lips aren't like Audrey imagined. They're imperfect and exquisite, chapped around the edges yet still so soft, and Audrey runs one hand through Emma’s hair to remind herself that _she's here, they're real, this is happening._ The one kiss multiples, Audrey practically gasping every time she breaks away for air. She can hear Emma’s breathing hitch, too, can feel the way her thumb strokes urgently over Audrey's jawline.

Emma's still against the stone wall, and Audrey surges up to meet her, the heels of her boots nearly lifting off the floor. She runs a hand through Emma’s hair again and ends up scraping her knuckles, one by one, against the rough wall.

“ _Shit_ ,” she hisses, backing away slightly to shake out her hand. Emma murmurs something concerned that Audrey doesn't catch. Instead, she stands there, dumbfounded, cradling her scraped fingers. The moment, she realizes, is over, and she has no idea what's left in its wake.

“I—” Audrey stutters, “I’m sorry, I just don't—what's happening, here?”

Emma breathes in, deep. Exhales. “I don't know.”

It shouldn't be terrifying, but it is, years of uncertainty finally answered with more of the same. Audrey's mind is buzzing, begging her to choose fight or flight. It feels like her skin is on fire.

Audrey tries not to run from her fears anymore, but—well—Emma's always been a special case.

“I'm sorry,” she says, and turns to leave, one hand worrying the back of her neck, before the look on Emma's face can stop her. She keeps walking, so tempted to break into a run, even when Emma calls, _Audrey,_ after her.

The crisp night air stings against the fresh wounds on her hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BACKSTREET'S BACK, ALL RIGHT!
> 
> scream is dead and so are my dreams, so here's a consolation prize. i have mental plans for the rest of the work and i promise i'll actually update it. thanks for sticking around!


	6. where does the good go?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Audrey swallows, her brain on overdrive as she tries to figure out a way to get through the next few lines. She wishes she hadn't written them. She's glad she did. 
> 
> Audrey continues: “Suddenly, there is a loud thumping in the hall behind them. The killer is getting close. Theo squeezes Alex’s hand, shuts her eyes. Alex steels herself for something -- not the killer. She doesn't take her eyes off of Theo.”
> 
> Though she'd dreamed up and written and revised the words, Audrey glues her eyes to the script page.
> 
> “Do you know that I'm in love with you?”

7:32 a.m.  
**Emma Duval**  
Hey, you up?

7:54 a.m.  
**Emma Duval**  
Guess not, haha. Let me know when you get these

9:31 a.m.  
**Emma Duval**  
Hey, Rumplestilstsken, still hoping to hear from you…

9:33 a.m.  
**Emma Duval**  
Let me know if we're still on for rehearsal today

9:56 a.m.  
**Emma Duval**  
Audreyyyyyy

10:29 a.m.  
**Emma Duval**  
Helloooo

11:04 a.m.  
**Emma Duval**  
I'm really sorry if I messed up last night. Please just talk to me.

11:05 a.m.  
**Emma Duval**  
xo

 

\--

 

Audrey awakens to a series of persistent knocks. It's noon, and she's asleep because it's Sunday, and she's a sane person. Also because she spent the first nine hundred or so Sunday mornings of her life in church, so she's _earned_ this. She frowns at the door, barely sitting up in bed. 

“Yeah?” she calls, scrubbing a hand over her face.

Emma's voice, confident and unmistakable, rings through Audrey’s hollow wooden door. “Hey, it's me.”

And just like that, Audrey is extremely awake.

“Oh, uh--ONE SEC!” she answers, flinging herself out of bed and toward her closet. She unfolds the nearest pair of sweatpants and tugs them on over her boxer briefs, rifles through her dresser and pulls out the first T-shirt she sees. It's light grey, with bold red type: _BURY ME AT MAKE OUT CREEK._ She drops it like it's on fire. It's Emma's.

Audrey grabs a neutral black V-neck from the drawer, throws it on. Runs a hand through her nonexistent hair. She stares at herself in the mirror hanging from her door, half-obscured by stupid stickers--Jason Voorhees, The Morgue’s cheesy logo, LU Pride.

 _You can do this,_ she thinks. _Everything is fine._

When she opens the door, Emma’s standing there, patient yet expectant. She's fully dressed--running shorts and a tank top, her hair sensibly up--and brandishing bagels. She shakes the bag a little, shifts her weight from foot to foot. Her back is straight, her smile is natural, and she's not breaking eye contact with Audrey. Still, she looks nervous. It's almost enough to distract Audrey from the slight sheen of sweat shining on Emma's collarbone.

 _Everything is maybe, probably fine_.

“Did you get my texts?” Emma asks as she enters the room. Audrey steps out of the way to let her in, dazed.

“I just woke up.”

“Oh,” Emma says, suddenly focused on opening the bag of bagels. “I asked if we were still on for rehearsal today.”

Audrey scrambles over to her desk to paw through the four different calendars that occupy its surface and surrounding wall space. The same thing is inked on each one, a simpering smiley face drawn next to the appointment.

Audrey groans. “Shit, I'm sorry, I totally spaced.”

“It's okay,” Emma shrugs, still avoiding eye contact. “If you need more time--”

“No, I mean, the script is ready and everything. So.”

“So, okay.” Emma rolls up the brown bag again, gets to her feet. She wipes her hands self-consciously on her athletic shorts. “What first?”

“Well, so, okay,” Audrey starts, rifling through the papers on her desk to unearth two neatly bound copies of the final draft of her script. Her mom always used to joke that she kept a room like a hurricane, but there was always an eye in the storm.

“Here.” She offers the script to Emma, and self-consciously notices the weight of it as it leaves her hands.

Emma notices it too. “Wow, it got longer,” she comments as she rifles through. It's a warm observation, though. Complimentary.

“Yeah,” Audrey says.

 

They start with a read-through of the entire thing, where Emma plays the protagonist and Audrey takes on all of the other roles. This occasionally leads to hilarity, when Audrey has to have conversations with herself. She hams it up when that happens, donning two separate and goofy voices and darting from one end of the room to the other. Emma laughs, every time. She records some of it and sends the videos to Brooke. It's nice. Normal.

Emma, for her part, starts out as an okay actress. She flubs a few deliveries and breaks when she mispronounces words, but, halfway through the script and after an hour of Audrey’s cajoling, she really comes into her own. She brings a subtlety and commitment to the role that makes Audrey see it in an entirely new light, showing her parts of her own character that she'd never previously considered.

“Interior abandoned hotel room, night,” Audrey narrates. “Theodora and Alex sit, backs against the barricaded door.” Emma and Audrey sit on Audrey’s bed, their backs against her wall. “Theo is alert, knuckles white against the dark handle of her kitchen knife. Alex watches her. Fiddles with her half-broken baseball bat.

“After a few excruciating moments of quiet, Theo speaks.”

“Hey, distract me,” Emma cuts in, delivering her line to a T. She sounds on-edge, vulnerable.

“Okay,” Audrey responds as Alex. “Do you remember when we were twelve, and we both went to our first dance?”

 “Jesus, Alex,” Emma laugh-exhales, “These might be our last moments, and you want to remind me of my awkward stage?”

“You'll die with humility,” Audrey responds. Emma laughs, as scripted. “No, seriously,” Audrey continues, “You remember when you went to slow dance with Josh Schwartz, and he made you cry because he told you your palms were sweaty, and I was so mad?”

“You held a huge grudge over that,” Emma/Theo retorts with a smile. “You didn't even go to his bar mitzvah the next year.”

“Not even though everyone said there was a chocolate fountain,” Audrey/Alex replies, dramatically wistful.

Still smiling, Emma sighs. “When you're twelve, a chocolate fountain is pretty much as big as your world gets.”

Audrey slips back into her narrator role. “The girls briefly occupy their own worlds, before reentering the moment together. Theo smiles at Alex, taking her hand.” Emma grabs Audrey’s hand, squeezing it like a lifeline.

Audrey swallows, her brain on overdrive as she tries to figure out a way to get through the next few lines. She wishes she hadn't written them. She's glad she did.

Audrey continues: “Suddenly, there is a loud thumping in the hall behind them. The killer is getting close. Theo squeezes Alex’s hand, shuts her eyes. Alex steels herself for something -- not the killer. She doesn't take her eyes off of Theo.”

Though she'd dreamed up and written and revised the words, Audrey glues her eyes to the script page.

“Do you know that I'm in love with you?” Alex/Audrey asks-tells-sidesteps Emma/Theo. It's an Audrey confession through and through, if Audrey was the kind of person who made confessions anymore -- a test and an exclamation in one. It's half-assed and genuine and off-beat and just right. Because she wrote it. Because it's fictional. Basically.

Audrey has a brief and hysterical flashback to her freshman creative writing class at LHS: _Write what you know._

Emma's eyes flutter open. “I, um--” she stutters. It's in the script. Audrey remembers her professor inking a compliment next to it on the first draft -- _Realistic dialogue!_

“I just needed to tell you, before…I mean, just in case.” Audrey's never been a particularly good actor, so it's a good thing she's able to draw from experience.

She starts on her next line, more narration: _Theo leans over and kisses Alex._

But before the words can even really leave her lips, Emma leans over and kisses her. And for the past ten minutes it's felt like a weird grey area between whether they were both acting or just rewriting real life, but suddenly everything feels black-and-white. This is no longer Theo kissing Alex, it's Emma kissing Audrey, and Audrey's heart is slamming against her chest and her ears are ringing and this is maybe the realest she's ever felt.

This is the second time they've kissed in nearly twelve hours, but somehow last night feels a mile away. This time is no more expected but altogether less surreal. Maybe she half-thought this might happen, when Emma showed up at her door this morning. Maybe she's riding the high of seeing her semi-autobiography made manifest, like it makes sense for things to happen this way because it's what she'd been picturing when she wrote the words, and when she cast Emma in the part. The power of wishful thinking acting in full force on her rickety dorm bed.

Whatever the reason, Audrey really feels present this time, has the clarity of mind to drop her script and place one hesitant hand on Emma’s waist, the other on her cheek. She's so warm; Audrey can see the blush rising high in her cheeks even through closed eyes. Emma cups Audrey’s face in her hands, her fingers soft and warm and sure.

The kiss carefully slips into more, a quiet exchange of warmth and breath and time. Nearly an hour goes by with barely any change, save for the two of them melting into the bed, heads on pillows and feet entangled. It feels like a century. It feels like a minute. Audrey's heartbeat hasn't slowed down or softened the entire time. Eventually, Emma shifts and tucks one of her legs in between Audrey’s. Audrey lets herself register how _good_ that feels for .01 seconds, before freezing up and halting their flow with all the skill of a lifelong self-flagellator.

Emma registers Audrey’s hesitation and slowly backs off, eyeing her quizzically. Audrey clears her throat, then asks, “What are we doing here?”

It's the same question she'd asked the night before, with none of the bite. She whispers it into the space between them like a prayer.

Emma shakes her head. “I don't know.”

 

\--

 

What happens next, Audrey logically knows, is ridiculous.

That afternoon sparks a new pattern. This unspoken acknowledgement of what's between them opens the floodgates on years of repressed attraction, and suddenly Audrey and Emma find themselves making out all over campus. They both carry on as if things haven’t changed -- sharing the same jokes, practicing the same little rituals -- with the minor addition of kissing basically all the time.

They hook up when they're supposed to be studying in a corner of the library, when they're the last two people in the dining hall, when Sorority Katherine goes to a leadership conference in Atlanta. Things never escalate beyond making out, as if they both intuit just how terrifying that would be. They don’t say _I love you_ to each other anymore, now, because somehow _I love you_ got ten times heavier while neither of them were looking. They always make sure they’re alone, again implicitly agreeing that it’s the only way to keep this from getting out to their friends (okay, getting out to Noah).

It’s simple, or as simple as they’re able to be. Audrey convinces herself it’s the best possible arrangement, if she forgets about how badly she wants to have sex with Emma, or about how they can’t kiss in public, since everyone thinks they're dating but their friends _know_ they’re not. Because they’re not dating, and that’s mostly fine. It feels simple, until she remembers that it’s complicated.

It’s basically perfect, she tells herself.

Until it’s terrible.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> emma duval sends properly capitalized, punctuated text messages. she rarely uses emojis. you know it to be true.
> 
> thanks for sticking with me through this one guys, i promise you i'm really passionate about it and have no plans to abandon it. i actually already have the next 1500 words written, so hopefully you'll see an update soon!


	7. relief next to me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Audrey’d spat out the words and backed away from Emma, her primary defense was always to attack. Emma hadn’t had a chance to say anything in return. She’d stood there, dumbfounded, her mouth agape and mind running a million possible responses. _You’re right, I had no idea,_ she’d later wanted to scream, _but I wish I had._ It made more sense than, _I think I broke your heart because I loved you, too._

Emma is usually honest with herself. _Sometimes too honest,_ her therapist often says whenever they discuss Emma’s loud inner critic. At the same time, she likes things to be just so, even if _just so_ requires a fib. These are the kinds of neuroses you develop when you grow up hiding a broken home from all your friends at school, or you have nobody to tell when you overhear your dad calling your mother a whore. Audrey had never understood why Emma was so quick to forgive Kevin. Audrey had the privilege of thinking that was as bad as the Duval house got.

Pathologize herself though she might (and she did, often) there were hundreds of reasons, both inane and pertinent, why Emma had subconsciously closeted herself all these years. She didn’t like to go against the grain. She wanted men to grant her her own self worth. She would rather die than disappoint her mother. She lived in suburban Louisiana. Whatever her excuse, Emma had mentally packed up her desire, odd fascination with Scarlett Johansson and all, into a neat little box somewhere around age 14. It was the same year she stopped making an effort in her friendship with Audrey, letting things splinter for good. The same year Audrey got her first short haircut and her first growth spurt, her once baby fat-cute face now able to accommodate a relaxed, flirtatious smile.

The night she and Nina had taped Audrey and Rachel, something had gone off inside of her like a bomb. She hadn’t heard from Audrey in ages at that point, didn’t even know what kind of car she drove. She never suspected, after years of burying her own feelings, that Audrey was gay. It had been the worst kind of surprise to find her and an unknown girl tangled up in the front seat of Audrey’s dorky used car.

“Woooah,” Nina had let out a low whistle and a chuckle. “Did you know your kindergarten bestie was a dyke?”

Emma had shaken her head numbly, eyes still fixed on the other car.

“Ugh, didn’t you guys used to have sleepovers and stuff? You must be so creeped out.” Again, Emma offered no reply. Nina opened the camera app on her phone. “Brooke is not going to believe this.”

Emma hadn’t even thought to stop her before it was too late.

Nina had been Emma’s first kiss, actually, though Emma told everybody it was a boy at summer camp in the fifth grade. Emma’s perpetual shyness around boys and her sudden acceptance by the in crowd come high school had found her locking lips for the first time at age 15. It happened in front of a group of boys, at a party hosted by upperclassmen. Nina had smelled like freesia and coconut, and tasted like menthols and Pabst Blue Ribbon. It couldn’t have lasted more than a few seconds. Afterward, Emma had excused herself to the bathroom, and cried without really knowing why.

Audrey was a much better kisser than that dumb dead bitch, for what it was worth.

“I loved you, and you broke my heart,” she’d told Emma nearly two years ago now. “The worst part is, you didn’t even know you were doing it.”

Audrey’d spat out the words and backed away from Emma, her primary defense was always to attack. Emma hadn’t had a chance to say anything in return. She’d stood there, dumbfounded, her mouth agape and mind running a million possible responses. _You’re right, I had no idea,_ she’d later wanted to scream, _but I wish I had._ It made more sense than, _I think I broke your heart because I loved you, too._

Now, she finds herself here. Finally out of the closet to herself, but terrified to say something to anybody else. With Audrey, but not really _with Audrey._ It’s exhilarating and soul-crushing and stupefying, in that order.

Two weeks after the screenplay rehearsal, Emma figures something has to give. She and Audrey haven’t addressed what they’re doing at all and Emma, despite being an expert at bottling things up, is dying. Brooke has already asked her what’s wrong during three different Skype calls. Her journal is one hundred pages thicker. It’s time for some relief.

Audrey leads her to her favorite area of the library during the break between dinner and their Monday evening class sessions (a lab for Emma, a film screening for Audrey). The modern lesbian fiction section is perpetually empty because, as Audrey explains, “Everyone here is an idiot.” Audrey self-consciously points out some of her favorite books there, which leads, as most things do these days, to the two of them kissing each other senseless. Her back flush against the shelves and fingers strung through the belt loops in Audrey’s loose-fitting jeans, Emma hardly has the brain capacity to acknowledge the irony of where they are. After knocking a copy of _Tipping the Velvet_ to the floor with her heel because Audrey was kissing her neck in _just_ the right spot, Emma realizes the time to say something is now or never.

“Hey,” she says, gripping Audrey’s face in her hands and looked determinedly into her eyes. “I think I’m — I mean. I’m gay.” She nods solemnly, the full stop at the end of her declaration.

Audrey stares back at her, the edge of her mouth twitching up into a bemused smile that quickly gives way to a grin. “I mean,” she shrugs. “Fuckin’ A, man.”

Emma beams back, then bursts into laughter. They both nearly miss their classes, doubled over and wiping delirious tears from their eyes.

 

\--

 

It’s smooth sailing for a few days after that, until it becomes clear that neither of them intends to make the first move in defining their relationship. Then, they resume their weird dance of essentially dating without talking about it to anyone, especially each other. Things shift a bit on the physical front, at least, when Audrey initiates some over-the-clothes action in the middle of one particularly transcendent not-date in Emma’s room. This becomes the new line to toe, which they both do mercilessly, until their desperate desire to have sex with each other is yet another thing they’re not talking about.

Audrey can tell the lack of communication is getting to Emma by the way she starts to micromanage her own life, constantly cross-referencing her color-coordinated planner against her calendar app to ensure nothing falls through the cracks. For her part, Audrey has thrown herself into her screenwriting project with abandon, agonizing over who else to cast in the reading before its scheduled slot the next week. She finally caves and allows Noah to read scene descriptions, after he spit-shake promises to not add any of his own commentary.

“Who’s going to read for Alex?” Emma asks her one night over the top of her textbook.

Audrey grinds her teeth until she can feel an ache start to bloom at the hinge of her jaw. The thought of Emma saying her lines to anybody else makes her want to hit someone. “I don’t know,” she coolly responds without looking up from her computer.

Audrey knows on some subconscious level that she could solve everything by initiating The Talk, but that would require her to develop both common sense and amenability. Instead, she vacillates wildly between euphoria and professional sulking, usually occupying the anxiety-ridden grey area somewhere in between. Had anybody known to ask what the hell her problem was, she would have said that she knew Emma didn’t really want to be with her, and she was just enjoying what she could before Emma realized her mistake. Had anybody known to ask her what the hell her problem was, they would have also been able to tell her that she was being an idiot.

 

Shit really hits the fan on Tuesday, just two days before Audrey’s script reading, because her dad is a liar and apparently God _does_ hate the gays.

It begins as a normal night — at least, normal for the past few weeks. Emma comes over on the pretense of rehearsing lines that she no doubt knows by heart. As both Emma and Audrey had hoped but not anticipated, they end up making out again after they reach the climactic kiss scene.

They’d both been sitting on the floor to rehearse, and now Audrey has her back against the side of her bed and Emma in her lap. She runs her hands reverently over Emma’s hips, letting her thumbs skate over the gap between the hem of her T-shirt and the waistband of her jeans. Emma runs her tongue over Audrey’s lower lip, and Audrey opens her mouth to deepen the kiss. She’s reminded, suddenly and stupidly, of all the times she spent playing and replaying the makeout scene from _Jennifer’s Body_ when she stumbled across it on HBO in the sixth grade.

Emma shifts on top of her, moving her hips to the same beat as her tongue, and Audrey tries desperately not to spontaneously combust. Ever the competitor, she grips Emma’s head in one hand and runs the other over one of her breasts, pausing teasingly before fondling her through the layers of her clothing.

Emma breaks their kiss, her breaths coming in heavy and fast. “God, that feels good,” she exhales, and moves to kiss down Audrey’s jaw and neck. Audrey’s eyes roll up to the ceiling, a silent thank you to Jesus or Sappho or whichever deity lets baby butches feel up the women of their dreams. Joan of Arc, probably.

She loses track of her thoughts completely when Emma softly bites at the spot between her throat and clavicle, then soothes the wound with her tongue. “Fuck,” Audrey murmurs, low and blissful. Emma takes the hint and does it again, before sitting up to admire her handiwork. A burn-like red mark forms just below the neckline of Audrey’s white cotton undershirt. Emma looks her dead in the eye, barely concealing her pride.

Audrey can do little else but pull Emma towards her for a crushing kiss, this time releasing her fistful of Emma’s hair to devote both her hands to the other girl’s chest. It doesn’t take long for Emma to shift so that she’s sitting on one of Audrey’s thighs, grinding her denim-clad hips against her.

Instinctively, Audrey brings a hand under Emma’s shirt, desperate to touch more of her. Almost as soon as she’s done it, she backs off, rests her hand below the hem of Emma’s form-fitting tee. “Is this okay?” she asks.

Emma barely stops moving over her. “Yes,” she answers, before pulling Audrey back in for another kiss.

Audrey wraps her arms around Emma and pulls her closer, then slips both her hands under her shirt. She feels the smooth curve of Emma’s waist and the arch in her back, revels in the softness of her stomach. “God, I love your body,” she says, without hesitation. It’s the kind of sincere truth she can only express here, where they’re together for nobody but themselves. Emma falters for a moment before kissing her more ferventy than before.

Audrey slowly runs a hand over Emma’s right breast, barely covered by a white lace bralette. Emma responds enthusiastically, pressing her tongue against Audrey’s. It’s all the encouragement Audrey needs to touch her in earnest, using both her hands to caress Emma’s chest. She brushes her thumbs over Emma’s nipples and Emma breaks their kiss to moan, soft and high. Audrey is forever thankful that she’s one of the few freshmen without a roommate on this campus.

Emma backs off for a moment and shyly eyes Audrey before taking off her own shirt. Audrey’s dim Target lamp casts a warm glow over Emma’s bare skin. She sits there, practically half-naked, and pushes her hair out of her face.

Audrey is possibly dying. Maybe her heart is disintegrating, or her short-circuiting brain is shutting down for good. Maybe she just really needs to come.

“You’re so fucking beautiful,” is all her awestruck mind knows how to say. So she does.

It doesn’t take long for things to escalate after that. Emma returns to kissing and licking Audrey’s neck, each mark from her mouth like a firebrand to Audrey’s skin. Emma’s hips melt into Audrey‘s, her knee persistently rubbing against Audrey’s crotch. Audrey sucks in a sharp breath through her nose. Her head buzzes. She feels weightless and electric, like she’s glowing from the inside out. She’s pretty sure she’s never been more wet than she is right now — including that one time she and a Tinder hookup tried scissoring.

Eager for more contact, Audrey pushes one side of Emma’s bralette up and touches her bare breast. Emma grinds on her and grips her face harder, whispers a _Please_ that’s more than enough encouragement for Audrey to keep going. She continues the same urgent strokes and squeezes as before, but this time the direct contact nearly drives Emma over the edge.

Emma picks up the relentless pace of her grinding, her leg pressing insistently against Audrey’s clit. They’re both practically panting between kisses now, as if the temperature in the room has skyrocketed in the past half a minute. Emma sucks on Audrey’s tongue, like these touches will kill her and it’s all she can do to hang on to Audrey with her teeth. Audrey moans into her mouth, which only makes Emma press harder with each downstroke of her hips.

Audrey pulls away for a second and frantically fingers the skin above Emma’s pants. “God, I want to fuck you so badly,” she breathes. She unbuttons the fly on Emma’s jeans.

It’s as if that tiny release of button from fabric sets off an explosion, rending the air between them. Emma backs off suddenly, practically crawls away from Audrey. It’s a jarring halt in this hour filled with escalation.

“Woah woah woah, wait,” Emma huffs, pushing her mussed hair away from her face. She’s still breathing heavily, her jeans gaping and torso nearly bare.

Audrey can’t help but smirk at the sight of her. “Shit, Em, kind of getting mixed signals here,” she murmurs, self-consciously crossing her arms over her chest.

Emma doesn’t smile. She stares at Audrey, brow furrowed and jaw tense. Audrey chuckles nervously, in an attempt to smooth out the unprecedented shift in mood. “What, did I do something wrong?” she asks, half-jokingly. It’s an offering, a chance for Emma to laugh along — _Of course not_.

Emma doesn’t laugh, just stares. After a beat, she takes a deep breath, opens her mouth. “What am I to you?” she asks finally, more accusatory than inquisitive.

Audrey feels anxiety seep into her like poison, turning her stomach and spiking the sweat under her arms and on her palms. “What?”

“It’s a pretty straightforward question.” Emma gives no ground. She hardly even blinks.

“I mean, I’m—” Audrey splutters. “You’re one of my best friends, I—”

“ _Seriously,_ Audrey?” Emma interrupts. “What, are you hooking up with Noah, too?” Emma grabs her shirt a few feet away and huffily puts it on. A high-pitched, sad cry of _N_ oooo sounds in the back of Audrey’s brain. Her clit’s voice, no doubt.

“What do you want me to say?” Audrey counters, throwing her hands up in defeat.

Emma scoffs. “I don’t want you to say anything you don’t want to say.”

Audrey groans, clasping her hands against the back of her head. She can already feel a migraine blooming at the base of her neck.

“Okay,” Emma stands, crosses her arms. “I think I’d like to at least know that you don’t just see me as an easy lay.”

Audrey gapes up at her before angrily scrambling to her feet.

“You really think I’m that kind of person? After everything we’ve been through?” Audrey’s practically yelling now. Emma of all people knows that once she gets going, she can’t easily be stopped.

When Emma gets mad, though, she can be equally ruthless. “I don’t know this version of you, Audrey,” she snaps. “This is uncharted territory, forgive me for asking for directions.”

“Why do I have to be the one with all the answers?!” Audrey hates the high-pitched desperation in her voice as soon as she hears it.

“Because maybe I have a hard time trusting people when it comes to sex,” Emma shouts back. “That can happen when the best boyfriend you’ve ever had is the one who nonconsensually filmed your sex tape.”

Audrey raises an eyebrow. “And that’s something I absolutely can’t relate to, right? Traumatic formative sexual experiences immortalized on video?”

Emma takes a step back. “How long are you going to keep throwing that in my face?”

Audrey lowers her voice. “I don’t know, how long are you going to hate me because of Piper?” She clenches her jaw and her fists. Not because she wants to start swinging, but because it’s easier than looking scared.

Emma looks like she’s been hit anyway. “What?”

Audrey retreats to the other side of her bed, starts senselessly throwing things into her messenger bag. “That’s what this is about, right? You’re never going to trust me. You don’t want to say it, so I’m saving you the trouble.” She crosses the room and stuffs her feet into her boots.

Emma watches her, dumbfounded. Audrey avoids her gaze. She knows the sudden conversational swerve makes absolutely zero sense, but she's an expert at self-destruction, and it's the most explosive thing she could have possibly said. She knows, logically, that Emma had already forgiven her for Piper. Audrey has even forgiven herself for Piper, after a lot of therapy and self-reflection. She knows now that her friendship with Piper had occurred because she was unable to cope with her feelings for Emma. Hell, Emma knows it, too.

As Audrey stands in front of Emma, ready to leave, the parallels between that past implosion and this current one are not lost on her.

Audrey crosses the room.

“Where are you going?” Emma demands, anxious and exasperated all at once.

“To the library,” Audrey mutters as she walks past her. “I have work to do.” She yanks open the door, somehow harried and eerily calm.

Emma turns. She reaches out to catch Audrey’s jacket-clad shoulder, but stops halfway. “You can’t run from everything, Audrey,” she says instead. “Someday people are going to get tired of chasing you.”

Audrey stands there, her back to Emma, a girl cut from stone.

When she leaves, she’s not quick enough to miss the _bang_ of her own door as Emma slams it shut.

 

\--

 

It takes two hours for Audrey to realize she’s made an asshole move. This is what her therapist would refer to as _major progress_. The last time Audrey admitted to a mistake, it took three days.

She texts Noah from the library, her storyboards for Intro to Film abandoned long ago in favor of staring morosely at pictures of Emma on her phone.

12:04 a.m.  
**Bi-Curious  
** you got breakfast plans tomorrow? i need to tell you something

12:07 a.m.  
**The Virgin  
** Ooh. Intrigue.

12:08 a.m.  
**Bi-Curious  
** meet at burton at 9:30? they got eggs benny

12:08 a.m.  
**The Virgin  
** Buddy, as long as your shining face is there, so am I.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm doing nanowrimo (along with juggling all my jobs, feeding myself and my dog, etc.), so i'll likely only be able to post once this month. i wanted to post this extra-long chapter asap to hold you guys over, though! thanks so much for reading and supporting this, it really is one of my favorite things i've ever written and 90% of that is you guys being so sweet and lovely about it. have a fantastic november, and see you soon! xx


	8. don't confess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m in love with Audrey,” Emma spits out. Her voice is clipped, an instinctual defense against any disbelief or disgust. She sounded the same way when she was in Kindergarten and she told her mom, brow furrowed, she was going to be a garbage man for Halloween.
> 
> Brooke offers no rebuttal. “Oh,” she says instead, like Emma just told her she was thinking of declaring her major in soc instead of psych.

“I’ve been hooking up with Emma,” Audrey confesses, her eyes fixed to the pocket of Noah’s flannel overshirt.

He freezes, ketchup slowly pouring out of the upturned bottle in his hand. He sits like that for a moment, drenching his eggs in the sauce, before he rights himself and asks, “Duval?”

Audrey glares at him. “No, Thompson. I love her work. It’s a Sarah Paulson-Holland Taylor situation.”

Noah takes another moment to process. “For how long?”

Audrey purses her lips. “About three weeks.”

Noah’s eyebrows skyrocket to the top of his head. “You’ve been having sex with Emma Duval for _three weeks_?”

“Making out and...stuff,” Audrey grits out, lowering her voice in the hope that Noah will do the same. “We haven’t had sex. We almost did, last night, but—”

“Small potatoes, AJ,” Noah interjects, brandishing a home fry on his fork. His voice is manically high. “The point is you’ve been engaging in sexual activity with Emma.”

Audrey sighs. “Yep,” she says, as if finally admitting to a crime.

“Our Emma, the one you’ve been in love with since you were twelve,” Noah continues erratically. “The one who final-girled her way through two serial killers and loves kale and still listens to Mary Chapin Carpenter.”

A small, helpless flutter erupts in Audrey’s chest. “The very same.”

Noah sits back, digesting this information. “So Emma is…” He considers his phrasing. “A gay person.”

Another flutter. “Correct.”

“She’s not just trying this out on you, unaware that doing so would break your fragile lesbian heart.”

Audrey takes a deep breath. Even if she feared it with all her being, she knew Emma would never do that to her. “No,” she answers. “She came out to me.”

“Holy shit,” Noah replies, eyes wide and a hand on his chest. “That’s so beautiful.”

Audrey shrugs bashfully, because it is.

“Well then,” Noah breaks out into a grin, offering his hand up for a high five. “Congratu-fucking-lations, stud!”

“It’s not that simple,” Audrey tells Noah. His hand remains frozen in mid-air. She leaves him hanging, staring at her half-eaten toast. “I think I fucked it all up.”

Noah regards her sympathetically. “Oh come on, man, it can’t be that bad. It’s not like you chloroformed her.”

This does not have the desired comedic effect. When Audrey responds, her voice sounds wrecked, like she’s holding back tears. “I just don’t know what I would do if I fucked up our whole friendship,” she chokes out. She becomes more panicked as she goes on. “I don’t know how she feels, and I don’t want to hear her out even if she does tell me, because if this doesn’t mean as much to her as it does to me, it will kill me. Like, _kill_ me. And she asked me how I felt about her last night and I did something really chickenshit, and now—” She looks at Noah, face hard and eyes shining. “Now I’m never going to see her again.”

Noah gets up and sits next to her on the booth side of their table, putting a familiar arm around her shoulder. “You’re going to see her again, you little drama queen,” he says softly. “It’s just that when you do, you need to nut up and tell her how you feel.”

Audrey huffs out a laugh. “Yeah,” she answers with a sniff. After a moment, she turns and regards Noah with a grimace. “Man, I must be really desperate to be getting girl advice from you, huh.”

Noah chuckles, rubbing Audrey’s shoulder. “Yeah, well, I’m sure I’ll be in the same boat someday, if I ever work up the chutzpah to actually ask a guy out.” He hams it up on “chutzpah.” Audrey smiles weakly.

They sit there for a little while, each considering this shift in their group of friends. Audrey’s really missed Noah; she’s been so caught up in Emma for the better part of a month. She rests her head on his shoulder, so relieved to be here. She suddenly feels exhausted, like the weight of this secret has hit her full-force now that she no longer needs to keep it.

Audrey’s smile fades eventually, though, and she shifts to stare contemplatively at her lap. “It’s so scary,” she says, unsure whether the “it” is her feelings, or this confession, or Emma herself.

Noah squeezes her in a quick side-hug, regardless. “I’m pretty sure you’ve seen worse.”

 

\--

 

Emma takes a deep breath. She stares at her computer screen, eyebrows inverted with worry. Brooke looks back, webcam-fuzzy and unexpectedly quiet.

“All right, well, so,” Emma begins. “I mean, I guess I’ll just, uh—” She sighs, lets her shoulders slump. Brooke has barely moved, and Emma runs her mouse over the screen to ensure that Skype hasn’t dropped the call. This is maybe the most patient Brooke has ever been in their entire friendship.

“I’m in love with Audrey,” Emma spits out. Her voice is clipped, an instinctual defense against any disbelief or disgust. She sounded the same way when she was in Kindergarten and she told her mom, brow furrowed, she was going to be a garbage man for Halloween.

Brooke offers no rebuttal. “Oh,” she says instead, like Emma just told her she was thinking of declaring her major in soc instead of psych.

“I realized I had feelings for her because of the whole fake relationship, and so I kissed her,” Emma continues. Much to her relief, Brooke’s careful, placid expression finally betrays some surprise.

“ _Oh?_ ” Brooke says, cocking her head.

Emma unfurls the whole story, the words spilling over each other like an avalanche. “And we’ve been hooking up for almost a month, but then I asked her what I was to her, and she said I was her best friend, and it started this huge fight, and then she brought up _Piper_ of all things and then she left.” Emma bites at the inside of her cheek. “And, you know, at the risk of sounding dramatic, I feel like my heart has shattered into a million pieces, but I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it, so I knew I needed to call you. And now here we are.”

Brooke’s eyebrows have disappeared into her bangs. She lets out a low whistle. “Oh, Audrey,” she sighs, shaking her head. “Audrey, Audrey, Audrey.”

“I feel like you should be more surprised by this,” Emma responds flatly, tired of Brooke’s relentlessly unaffected facade.

Brooke shifts in her chair, leans more toward her laptop. “Oh I _am_ surprised,” she insists, the tips of her French-manicured fingers pressed against her chest. “I’m hugely surprised that you were the one who made the first move.”

“What?” Emma asks wearily. She stares at Brooke, her head propped up on her fist.

“I mean, Audrey’s been so into you for so long, I thought that this whole sham would break her for sure.” Brooke talks animatedly, her hands gesturing too fast for her webcam to catch up. “You were always the wildcard, but, I mean. When you got tipsy in high school, you would go on and on about Scarlett Johansson.”

Emma stares at her computer, mouth half-open, but Brooke plows on: “And you and Audrey had that whole folie a deux thing going on, so.” She shrugs, as if that’s an adequate end to some of the most confusing statements Emma’s ever heard in her life.

At a loss, Emma asks the question she wants answered the most. “What makes you so insistent that Audrey’s had feelings for me this whole time?”

It’s Brooke’s turn to be confused. “Well, she dumped Gina because of you, for one thing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a lot is happening, guys, but I'm a woman of my word, and i have plans for the end of this story. it's just a matter of putting words to page. thanks for your patience and faith!
> 
> also, Brooke Maddox is an icon and Noah and Audrey are the pinnacle of gay/lesbian solidarity. this isn't so much me writing fiction as it is me reporting the cold, hard facts.


	9. walking with a ghost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Audrey had texted her the day before, a skittish sort of message that had cleared up absolutely nothing. In the day since, Emma had pinballed between annoyance, bewilderment, fury, anxiety, and fondness. Her sorority girl roommate had shot her more than a few weird looks as she’d sat there, glaring at her phone._
> 
> _“Jeez, boy trouble?” she’d asked at one point. Emma had looked up, blinking._
> 
> _“Yeah,” she’d said blearily. “Something like that.”_

10:21 a.m.  
**Audrey Jensen  
** i understand if you don’t want to see me right now, and i wanted to let you know there’s no pressure on you to come to the reading. not because i don’t want you there, bc i do, but. yeah. no pressure. just wanted to put that out there.

Audrey waits for a reply for two hours, then turns her phone off for the entire day. It’s part cowardice, part pragmatism. She knows she won’t get anything done otherwise, and there’s a lot to do. It’s the day before her reading, and she needs to find a lead understudy, now that she’s spectacularly alienated her first choice actress. She also still doesn’t know who she’s going to cast as Alex. A quick flip through her Facebook friends reveals a number of short-haired, plucky art geeks, mostly one-time hookups and acquaintances. She clicks on one, Frankie, and watches her cursor blink along the blank white expanse of a new Facebook message.

Audrey had met Frankie during orientation, the two of them pulled together by the sheer excitement of visually recognizing another gay person. They’d fooled around at a lame party early on in the semester before Audrey had realized her attraction to Frankie was more symbolic than sexual. After civilly redefining their relationship, Audrey and Frankie had stayed semi-friends. Audrey smiled whenever she saw one of Frankie’s posts on her timeline, and she thought fondly of the other girl’s penchant for  _ Star Trek  _ and Long Island iced teas. Frankie was an unabashed nerd and a budding theater major. Audrey knows she would make a great Alex.

Audrey stares at the open chat window, picturing Frankie’s square, freckled face alongside Emma’s softer profile. She thinks about what they might look like as they kiss, Frankie’s thin-yet-soft lips meeting Emma’s. Audrey remembers that the first time she’d ever kissed Frankie, Frankie had tried to put her tongue in her mouth straight away. Audrey shivers. A thought pops into her head, unbidden:  _ This is not a tongues kind of screenplay. _

She guffaws a little, turns to the mirror hanging on her closet door. She adopts a foppish, Miss Manners-esque affect. “This is NOT a TONGUES kind of screenplay!” she chastises herself.

Once her chuckles die down, Audrey stares at her own reflection a bit. She needs a haircut; the sides are getting long. A bit of acne by her chin signals just how shittily she’s been sleeping and eating for the past week, like she’d believed she could survive on secrets and sexual adrenaline alone.

Audrey could practically hear Gina’s voice in her ear. “That’s  _ so  _ Leo of you,” she’d often said knowingly. As if Audrey had any idea what the fuck that meant.

Audrey turns back to her computer and faces down the blinking cursor in her new chat window.  _ Frankie. Alex. Reading tomorrow. Tongues. _ She heaves a sigh and slouches down in her chair, running a hand through her shaggy hair.

 

\--

 

Emma barely sleeps the night before the reading. At 4 o’clock the day of, she has a breakdown in the middle of the student union because the first-floor cafe is out of salt-and-vinegar chips. The poor student manager serving her just sort of gapes as Emma wipes away a series of stoic tears.

“Sorry, thank you,” she mutters, slapping a five-dollar bill on the counter before running away with a small tea and a bag of Baked Lays that costs 75 cents.

She subsists entirely on snacks and herbal tea, the latter in an attempt to cleanse her of guilt for the former. Emma doesn’t do “snacks,” unless the word “seaweed” proceeds them. She’s always been about hearty meals, real nourishment, listening to your body. She’d learned to love cooking and providing for herself during the latchkey nights of her youth, when Maggie had worked long hours at the morgue. The best gift she’d gotten at her sixteenth birthday party had been a gift card to Trader Joe’s.

Now, she’s eating chips as a meal.  _ God, I’m turning into _ —

Audrey had texted her the day before, a skittish sort of message that had cleared up absolutely nothing. In the day since, Emma had pinballed between annoyance, bewilderment, fury, anxiety, and fondness. Her sorority girl roommate had shot her more than a few weird looks as she’d sat there, glaring at her phone.

“Jeez, boy trouble?” she’d asked at one point. Emma had looked up, blinking.

“Yeah,” she’d said blearily. “Something like that.”

By noon, Emma had decided she was going to the reading whether Audrey liked it or not. She would wear the jeans that made Audrey stare at her, and she would brush her hair until it was wheat-field soft, and she would kiss whatever random actress Audrey put in front of her. Emma had had to come back from very public, embarrassing breakups before, and, damn it, she would do it again.

After the chips breakdown, though, Emma had begun to reconsider. Was she really ready to see Audrey again, so soon? To perform for her like some trained monkey who just did whatever Audrey commanded? Was she ready to give Audrey that  _ power _ over her? She probably wasn’t even that good of an actress, anyway. She would just make a fool of herself. Audrey would have found an emergency replacement for her by now, anyway.

The reading is at 7 p.m., in the basement of the English building a few steps away from Emma’s. Audrey’s professor had scheduled it especially for her, because Audrey had written a full-length script for this class that just demanded a 20-page excerpt. She’s a genius, or whatever. Emma hates everything. 

At 6 p.m., she is lying on her bed, staring at the ceiling. The pages of Audrey’s script, strewn around her, crinkle as she shifts her weight. Her hair is unbrushed, her legs sweatpants-clad. She’s never felt so ugly in her life.

She’s back to staring at her phone, this time thumbing through her photos like a homicide investigator at a crime scene. Her and Audrey at the beach, Audrey scowling at the sudden selfie. Her and Audrey at the Eiffel Tower, their arms outstretched and grins wide. Audrey and Noah at Comic-Con after the  _ The Morgue _ ’s panel, excitedly chatting up Karen Kilgariff. A covert photo Emma had taken of Audrey just a few days ago, Audrey’s hand in her hair and her eyes on her laptop. Audrey. Audrey. Audrey. She’s there, no matter if Emma swipes right or left. And each new picture squeezes Emma’s heart just a bit tighter.

At 6:30, her phone buzzes admonishingly, a calendar alert informing her that the reading is half an hour away. She sighs and chucks the device to the other side of the bed. When she pulls herself up, it feels like when she was five and learning to swim and the instructor had made her push her own way to the surface of the pool. Emma's head crests through her cloud of self-doubt and she runs a hand through her hair, untangling a few knots with her fingers. She stares at herself in the mirror propped on top of her dresser, then glances at the tattoo peeking out from her sleeve. She can do this, damn it. She's Emma Duval.

Twenty minutes later she's striding towards the English building, script tucked under her arm and hair in a sleek-yet-unfussy ponytail. She's dressed for the part: a white tank top, jeans, and sneakers. The kind of no-nonsense clothes you might wear if you needed to run from someone, or something. If this particular tank top has an artful rip in the neckline and these particular jeans just happen to hug her thighs in just the right way, well. Two birds, one stone.

Emma gets to the classroom five minutes early, which is ten minutes late in her book. To Emma's dismay, the rest of the class apparently runs on art kid college time, and she opens the door on Audrey nervously unpacking her backpack, colonizing a cluster of chairs at the front of the room while her professor, the only other person there, chats excitedly.

“It's so thrilling to have a student so dedicated to her craft, I really think your peers will feel inspired after tonight's reading,” the teacher continues as Emma enters, unnoticed. Audrey just nods along furtively, her gaze fixed on her bag as she digs around for something.

Emma clears her throat, shuffles her feet. The professor stops mid-sentence and faces her, a pleasant, open expression on her face.

“Uh, hi, I'm Emma,” Emma says, extending a hand to the woman. “I'm reading tonight.”

The professor grins almost manically, her eyes widening as she clasps Emma's hand in both of hers. “Oh, you must be our Lynn!” she crows, and pulls Emma toward Audrey’s seats. “I'm Kim,” she tells Emma, because apparently she's  _ that _ kind of professor, before releasing her from her grip at the seat next to Audrey.

“Do have a seat,” Kim warmly instructs. Emma does, her eyes decidedly focused on the professor despite her peripheral vision screaming for glimpses of Audrey. “We're just waiting on the rest of the class, but we're small,” Kim continues as she walks toward the back of the room. “I'm actually going to run to the restroom before things get started, but I'm sure you girls have a lot to talk about about the reading.”

Just like that, Kim whirlwinds out the door, leaving Emma alone with Audrey. Emma finally turns ever-so-slightly to look at her, her throat constricting a bit as she takes Audrey in.

Because the fucked up thing is, Audrey looks  _ good _ . Disheveled, sure—there's a bit of darkness under her eyes, and a few zits at the edge of her jaw—but disheveled has always worked on her. She's wearing a grey, short-sleeved button down that shows just the edges of her bicep tattoo, an intricate, hand-sized floral piece Emma and Brooke had talked her into somewhere in Amsterdam. In lieu of contacts she’s wearing her glasses, brown tortoiseshell things that Audrey hates and Emma wishes she would permanently superglue to her face. Audrey taps her brown brogues against the wood floor and looks up at Emma. She brushes at her forehead nervously, as if swiping at some phantom hair. Emma remembers the Audrey who used to look at her like this, young and floppy-haired and still sheltered from the evil in the world. Nostalgia and sorrow strike her somewhere between the ribs.

“Thank you for coming,” Audrey says, almost like it's a question. Her voice is low and unsure, and a white-hot feeling drenches Emma from her scalp to her toes, because _ God  _ is she in love with her, and fuck if that doesn't make her feel like the biggest idiot in the world.

“Yeah, well.” Emma shrugs. “It wouldn't be fair if I just flaked on you.”

Audrey let's out a short laugh through her nose. “Uh, yeah, actually, it kind of would be.” She places her hands on her thighs (clad in black chinos, Emma notes, that are tapered just so at the ankle) and stretches, takes a deep breath. “I'm really glad you came.”

Emma averts her gaze, fiddles with the shiny-new binder she bought just for Audrey’s script. “So, who’re you gonna make me kiss tonight?” she asks. It’s an attempt at lightheartedness, but she can instantly feel the shift in the air between them, how Audrey freezes up like Emma’s sprung a trap inside her. Silence hangs between them for a moment, almost tangibly heavy—

“Hey, guys! Who’s ready to get their read on?!”

—and then Noah walks in the door.

He pauses for a moment, finally able to read a room after years of training, and locks eyes with Audrey. Emma can’t tell what passes between them before Noah’s barrelled on, continuing toward them like nothing weird is going on at all.

“What’s up, Duval?” he chirps, plopping into the chair between them and slapping a hand against his knee. “How’s our leading lady?”

As Emma shrugs and smiles weakly at him a gaggle of kids bursts through the door, chattering excitedly, and she’s grateful for the distraction. Two of them peel off from the herd and gravitate to Audrey, their own scripts in hand, and Emma can feel her own shoulders tense. She vaguely recognizes them, has seen Audrey sitting with each of them in the campus cafe at one point or another. The taller, red-haired girl—Kelly? Kelsey?—chuckles heartily at something Audrey says, and Emma grinds her teeth so hard she can feel the tension blooming into pain at the back of her head. The other girl, a fit, androgynous sort with mousy hair and tanned skin, shifts from one combat boot-clad foot to the other. Emma eyes her warily. That must be who Audrey has chosen for Alex.

Kim sweeps back into the room, arms extended like she’s about to conduct a grand concerto. She calls the room to order (“All right, all right, everyone! So glad you could make it.”) and gestures to Audrey deferentially.

“Ms. Jensen, the floor is yours,” she announces, lowering herself into her seat. “Please introduce your guests, and let the show begin!”

Audrey stands up, wiping her hands on her pants before clasping them in front of herself. “Thanks, Prof—thanks, Kim,” she starts, unlinking her hands and clapping them together again. “And thanks, guys, for being here. Uh, this is my screenplay, I guess, it’s called  _ Finally _ , and I’m way too obsessed with it to go back now, so you’d better like it.”

The rest of the kids in Audrey’s class chuckle, and Emma can’t help but smile to see Audrey’s rapport with them. This is no longer the same girl who used to snap at anybody who looked at her wrong.

“So, uh, this is my cast,” Audrey continues, gesturing to Emma and the others beside her. “Noah Foster will be reading the part of The Killer, as well as descriptions”—Noah raises two fingers in salute—“Emma Duval will be reading for Lynn”—Emma nods—“Shelly Anderson will be reading for Shane, and Micah Fernandez will be Lauren-slash-everybody else.” The redhead and androgynous girl offer acknowledging gestures, respectively. Emma realizes, too slowly, that that leaves—

“I,” Audrey says, “will be reading the part of Alex.”

Emma can feel her heart drop like it’s the first time it ever happened; like it’s fifth grade all over again and she’s zooming down a wooden incline in a definitely-unregulated metal car at the state fair, her first ever roller coaster and the first adrenaline rush she can remember. Her ears buzz now like they did then, her skin hot like it had been when she’d exited the coaster, ten and high on the world and crowing about touching the sky. She crashes back to reality with the realization that Audrey had been next to her then, too, her long, dark hair billowing in the wind and the color high in her cheeks. Emma wonders if the tips of her fingers had buzzed this way back then, if her heart had hammered to the same rhythm as now.

She settles into her seat and opens her binder to the script’s first page, eyes fixed on Audrey. Although she can feel her pulse in her ears, she knows this ride has just begun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bex's instagram has been so [lit](https://www.instagram.com/p/Bih6_jphJb7/?taken-by=bex_tk) lately amirite ladies


	10. on directing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Emma’s here. For her. And even looking at her makes the air around Audrey’s face feel summer-hot and lakeside-thick. She’s content to lose herself in the script and have this fun while it lasts._

Things are going okay, all things considered. All the supporting cast are totally game, although they occasionally stumble over each other’s lines, a folly undoubtedly borne from their total lack of group rehearsal. Every time a mistake happens, Audrey tries not to bristle or take herself out of the script. She knows it will only make things worse.

So she’s not Audrey anymore, she’s Alex, and Emma is Lynn, and Shelly and Micah are their slowly dying friends. Noah is clearly enjoying himself as the killer, which would be creepy if it wasn’t so on-brand. He also recites all the stage directions with verve, enunciating and reading like a pro thanks to years of podcasting. It makes Audrey almost smile a few times when she, as Alex, should actually be cowering in fear.

Emma never breaks character for a second, even when she messes up a line. It’s intoxicating to watch as she acts out a pitch-perfect Lynn: determined and logical-minded in the face of the killer, effervescent-yet-intense in flashback. Audrey’s pretty sure Emma makes her writing sound better than it actually is, but, then again, Audrey would pay to see Emma read the phone book.

For her part, Audrey is doing so well with the reading because she’s being propelled by an intoxicating mixture of nerves and hope. She knows it doesn’t mean anything that Emma is here, but her pulse still thrums double-time and the air around her feels crackly.  _ Emma’s just a really good person _ , she tries to tell herself.  _ She’s a really good person, and you’re not, which is why this won’t work out.  _ But Emma’s here. For her. And even looking at her makes the air around Audrey’s face feel summery-hot and lakeside-thick. She’s content to lose herself in the script and have this fun while it lasts.

The script teases the Alex/Lynn arc throughout, but always from Alex’s point of view, the idea being that Lynn doesn’t realize their romantic connection until the kiss. As a result, Audrey has written a lot of, “ALEX takes a long look at LYNN” and “ALEX follows LYNN with her gaze.” Alex pines as Lynn dances with a boy, swims in a backyard pool, and—sigh—changes clothes. Audrey had not fully processed just how excruciating it would be to hear these things read out in relation to her and Emma in front of 12 other people, but here she is, her cheeks reddening and hands quivering a bit every time. Audrey doesn’t dare act these long gazes out lest she dissolve into a pile of clothes and pages, her Emma-branded soul flopping onto the floor in front of the entire room.

Audrey had been 13 when she’d decided she wanted to marry Emma, because Emma was the prettiest, smartest, best person she knew. She’d said as much to her dad, who’d calmly explained to her that women didn’t marry women, and that she would eventually grow up and fall in love with a boy who she  _ actually  _ wanted to marry. It was 2012, and Audrey told her dad she  _ knew  _ about gay marriage. She went to  _ school.  _ Her dad had just sighed from his perpetual station at the dinner table, hands poised over a pile of medical bills, and told her to go to her room. Audrey had never brought home a girlfriend, or even mentioned them. It was an open secret in their two-person family.

Every June, people peppered her Facebook and Tumblr and Instagram feeds with talk about pride that, paradoxically, always just made Audrey feel more ashamed. Pride was easier, she figured, when you didn’t live in Louisiana and you didn’t have her dad.

Given that and the viral video incident, Audrey was—to put it lightly—not big on PDA. In Amsterdam that past summer, she, Emma, and Brooke had stumbled upon a lesbian wedding. It was the first one Audrey had ever seen in real life—and she’d barely known it, at first, because one of the women had been sporting a smart men’s tuxedo. Brooke had cooed at the couple while Emma stared, unreadable, and Audrey had excused herself. She’d murmured some excuse about making a call, then snuck off to cry in a restaurant bathroom.

She feels a similar panic creep up her throat now, as the script gets into the less subtle descriptions of Alex and Lynn’s romance. Audrey’s written a few hinting shots where Lynn checks Alex out, too, and when Noah reads over them Emma actually acts them out, her eyes sweeping over Audrey. For a moment it’s so intense that Audrey is convinced Emma has actually touched her in all the places where her gaze lands. It’s barely been two days; Audrey can remember what Emma’s fingers felt like on her skin like she can remember falling asleep, or breathing—even if that last one doesn’t come quite as easy now.

When it’s Audrey’s turn to read a line next, she fumbles, having not even noticed that they’d sailed on to page 72.  _ Oh _ , she realizes.  _ They’re at  _ that  _ part. _

The kiss scene.

Audrey’s palms prickle, and she’s surprised the pages of the script aren’t damp beneath them. That familiar panic burbles at the base of her throat, threatening to choke her out or forfeit her dinner or both. Audrey has killed people. She’s shot adult murderers dead and drugged herself and raced the clock to find her friend buried alive. She’s told Emma she loved her—privately. This is by far the scariest thing she’s ever done.

But even though her heart and head and gut are absolutely  _ screaming,  _ Audrey knows there’s only one way she should do this.

“You remember when you went to slow dance with Josh Schwartz,” Audrey breathes. Alex and Lynn have been running from the killer for so long now, and this is their rare opportunity to pause. Audrey catches her breath along with them. “And he made you cry because he told you your palms were sweaty, and I was so mad?”

“You held a huge grudge over that. You didn’t even go to his bar mitzvah the next year.” Emma-as-Lynn laughs, and Audrey feels something fuzzy tug at the back of her chest. Emma’d never done that in rehearsal.

“Not even though everyone said there was a chocolate fountain,” Audrey-as-Alex answers, a small smile tugging at the edges of her lips.

Emma/Lynn is smiling a bit, too. “When you’re 12, a chocolate fountain is pretty much as big as your world gets.”

The rest of the class barely chuckles through the whole thing, and Audrey’s professor is literally on the edge of her seat. The tingling in Audrey’s head comes back. This exchange is supposed to be funny, sentimental. But instead it’s almost like she and Emma are—flirting?

Noah clears his throat a little before narrating: “The girls briefly occupy their own worlds”—Emma and Audrey decidedly ignore this, still looking at each other—“before reentering the moment together. Lynn smiles at Alex, taking her hand.”

It’s an unconscious thing, when Audrey leans closer to Emma. (And since when had she turned in her chair to face Emma head-on? Since when had Emma turned to face her? Had they been like that this whole time?) Audrey’s right hand abandons her copy of the script and reaches, unbidden, towards Emma. 

A flash of horror hits Audrey, because she’s acted against her own scene description and is reaching for Emma, another girl, in front of all these people, and isn’t it stupid that she should be so afraid of that, isn’t it stupid that she shouldn’t want people to know she’s a dyke when she looks the way she is, isn’t it cowardly, isn’t it pitiful, isn’t it—

Emma meets her hand reflexively, her delicate fingers curling around Audrey’s palm. It’s an instant shot of calm, Emma’s thumb stroking smoothly along Audrey’s wrist. It takes Audrey back to all their shared touches back in high school, running from demons both real and imagined. Clutching Emma’s hand in the hallway, by a crowded ambulance. Hanging onto her for dear life during their brief stint as refugees. Audrey is proud to realize that she’d wanted to reinvoke that exact sense of calm and rightness in this scene. The shared sweetness before Alex and Lynn’s almost-bitter end.

When Noah starts reading—again, after clearing his throat a little—his voice is higher-pitched. It goes up even more at the end of his sentences, as if all the narration ends in question marks.

“Suddenly, there is a loud thumping in the hall behind them. The killer is getting close. Lynn squeezes Alex’s hand, shuts her eyes.”

Emma does. Audrey can see Emma’s chest slowly heaving with breath, as if she’s actually outrun a killer while just sitting in this room.

“Alex steels herself for something—not the killer,” Noah continues. “She doesn’t take her eyes off of Lynn.”

Audrey’s tempted to break from the scene description and look at her script. She so badly wants an excuse to look away from Emm. The tension in the room is suffocating—or maybe that’s just her own anxiety threatening to simultaneously crawl its way out of its throat and swallow her whole.

Audrey doesn’t look down, though. By some miracle of courage she stares straight at Emma’s closed eyes. She can feel Emma’s hand tense up around hers, and Audrey opens her mouth, Alex’s next line spilling from her tongue as both a scripted sentiment and an unfiltered, personal truth.

“Do you know that I’m in love with you?”

Emma opens her eyes and blinks, shakes her head for a second. It’s so similar to the reaction she’d had in the barn just a few years ago that Audrey half expects a cloud of dust to roll in over the classroom chairs. Her heart drops—it’s muscle memory at this point.

But then, Emma does something unexpected. Without looking at her script, she just shakes her head again and asks, “What?”

She breathes it out, practically laughs it, as if she’s genuinely been caught off-guard. It’s so charming that a few people in the audience titter, and the tension dissipates ever-so-slightly.

Audrey can’t help but smile a little, tickled by the sudden swerve off-script. There’s something buzzing between her and Emma, a hum in the cracks between their connected palms. Audrey slowly lowers their hands, rests her palm on Emma’s knee.

The panic—her dad’s voice, the video, the Amsterdam wedding—is still simmering at the back of Audrey’s mind, but it’s so much quieter. It would take a lot more to drown this moment out.

“I said,” Audrey tries again, “did you know that I’m in love with you?”

Emma still stares at her, mouth slightly agape. She has apparently forgotten that there is an entire script to follow on her lap, and Audrey can’t help but smile at her utter bewilderment. Emma smiles back, soft and unsure. A strand of hair has come untucked from her ear—without thinking, Audrey reaches up to put it back. She leans in closer without even really thinking it through.

When Audrey kisses Emma, it’s like a tiny iteration of the Big Bang. The entire energy of the room shifts, as classmates and cast mates and  _ Noah  _ react, the latter literally clapping a hand over his mouth to stifle a gasp. Apparently a few classmates shift uncomfortably or look away, and Shelly lets out a long, low whistle. When Noah describes it to Audrey after the fact, he calls it  _ A Moment _ .

When it’s happening, though, Audrey literally can’t perceive anything except for Emma: the soft familiarity of her lips, the warm intake of her breath, the way she huffs a sigh through her nose as she brings a hand up to rest on Audrey’s face. It’s all fairly chaste—they don’t open their mouths, and their hands don’t travel anywhere else—but it’s undoubtedly the most intense kiss of Audrey’s entire life. When she opens her eyes, she knows she’s flushed, her heart threatening to escape her chest.

Audrey drops her hand from Emma’s face and leans back in her seat, watching raptly as Emma does the same. Giddy to the point of delirium, Audrey smiles again. She laughs, and Emma laughs, too.

Audrey has all but forgotten the script at this point. She cocks her head. Her hand is back to resting on Emma’s knee. “Do you want to like, go out with me sometime?”

A small squeak next to Audrey reminds her where she is, because that squeak obviously belongs to Noah, who is obviously losing his mind. “Uh, Lynn,” Audrey tacks on clumsily, in an attempt to catch this runaway train before it costs her her rightful A grade. “Do you want to go out sometime, Lynn?”

Emma just smirks, the dimple in her left cheek deepening right on cue. She covers Audrey’s hand with her own. “Sure, Alex. I’d love that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. you guys have no IDEA how long i’ve been waiting to use “On Directing” as a chapter title. if you’ve never heard that song, please go listen to it NOW.
> 
> 2\. i chuckled a bit at all the comments i got from people saying they knew things were going to continue to be rough for these two. i love you guys, but—SIKE!
> 
> 3\. don’t worry this isn’t the last chapter


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